Five lessons I learned from five months as a Lenovo intern
What I gained from being in the corporate world— and how you can do it too!
I spent my spring of 2021 at Lenovo, working remotely from home in Southern California. I worked as a Global eComm Content Operations intern on the Worldwide eCommerce team, where I got to present to one of Lenovo’s Chief Marketing Officers (CMO), help launch 18 different products, analyze and save millions of dollars in revenue and try my hand at content strategy.
Here are five things that I learned from my five months that changed how I work and how I’ll tackle my career in the future.
#1. Advocate for yourself and your abilities whenever you can.
Before I even started at Lenovo, I was a nervous student who decided to take a gap year in the middle of the pandemic. I had just decided to skip the fall quarter at Stanford to continue working as a Civic Digital Fellow at the U.S. Census Bureau through Coding it Forward.
But now fall 2020 was ending, and I had no idea what I’d do the next year! By a stroke of luck, I ended up interviewing with two different Lenovo teams after applying through their application portal and visiting Lenovo events hosted for university students.
When I finally got my offer letter, it was for 10 weeks in the summer — not spring! After trusting my gut (and crossing my fingers for good measure), I jumped on a call with my future manager, told him that I would want to start even SOONER, and outlined why I’d be a good fit to jumpstart my internship in a few reasons:
- I could commit to working for a longer period of time than a traditional internship, allowing me more time to understand the business needs that Lenovo faces currently in its sector
- I already was on a gap year. I had already been working that 9-to-5 grind for the Census since June 2020, meaning that I knew how to quickly and easily adapt to a new team and be successful at it
- I was happy to learn and knew my stuff. I did research on Lenovo and asked questions before during my interview to understand what they were looking for in an intern… and I promised that I would deliver!
Surprisingly, my manager said yes — and that’s how I converted a summer internship of a few weeks to five months at Lenovo. If I hadn’t made the jump to stand up for my abilities and the potential that I could bring to my team, I wouldn’t have gotten where I am now in my early career.
#2. Don’t be afraid to take a big jump between roles.
In previous roles, I worked mostly in design. Leaving my freshman year, I was sure that I would want to be a UX Designer or Product Designer in the future.
So when I learned that designing wouldn’t be part of my core functioning at Lenovo, I was feeling a bit apprehensive — would that look bad to a future product design recruiter if I hadn’t followed a linear path? Would I “forget” how to design over the next few months if I wasn’t designing all the time?
Now, I know that’s not the case.
Actually seeing how data from our site pages and understanding how different landing pages and product launches could affect revenue made me more conscious of the way I designed. In a corporate world, each design decision that someone makes for a page could impact people’s livelihoods and KPIs across a business — a point that will be sure to stick with me as I move on.
Design thinking doesn’t stop when you exit Figma or Sketch. It stays with you wherever you are, helping you better create new connections and break down information no matter what you do.
#3. Network, network, network: you never know what might happen!
Over the period of my internship, I got to meet amazing people across the eCommerce team. Each of them brought so much unique life experience and knowledge about the behind-the-scenes at Lenovo.
Whenever I needed help on a project or wanted to level up my work, I always had someone to reach out to because of those connections I made prior. Through networking, I was able to meet people from the UX teams at Lenovo, even getting to do a fun side project on page intercepts for our gaming community website with the UX Research team nearing the end of my internship.
#4. Make it a habit of asking questions.
Throughout my time at Lenovo, I asked a lot of questions every day. From figuring out Sharepoint for the first time to learning what mid-funnel marketing strategies meant, asking questions was my most important skill. It made me braver in meetings and more confident when I was presenting because I knew that the information I had was backed by knowledge and feedback from all the people who helped answer!
Asking questions is especially important in a corporate world, where everything from files to teams to team customs can be vast, varied, and difficult to navigate alone.
#5. Work doesn’t have to be so serious all the time.
I think that one thing that I expected coming into Lenovo was that it purely work — that’s the impression I feel people get from corporate lifestyles and certainly one that I got as well. But Lenovo changed my mind about what my work could look like and how I could build personal goals and growth and still make it feel like fun! During my time here, I got to:
- Accidentally won a March Madness bracket
- Help throw a surprise bridal shower for my mentor
- Host intern coffee chats and get to play games for our socials
- Test out and game with free Lenovo products
Working at Lenovo as an intern was so much more than just work! It was a life-changing experience that opened my eyes to what an internship is meant to be: a way to test out new experiences and get a glimpse of what jobs are out there for me.
I’d encourage anyone else to do the same — if you’d like to learn more about my time at Lenovo or what I do, reach out to me on LinkedIn or see my personal website!
