Hello! This week has been a blur at times, but I’ve written a book of a post to make up for that. I arrived last Sunday and settled into my P&G housing. I’m living with other interns from local offices—it should be enjoyable.
My internship began with three days of general training about P&G, its culture, and its policies. If one of their goals was to excite us about working for P&G, it certainly worked. I thought I learned a good amount about the company as I prepared for my interview, but our facilitators truly demonstrated the company’s culture. It’s not competitive; we work together for the good of the company. Employees are proud to work for P&G. P&G makes more products than I ever imagined, and many of them lead their segment in profitability and market share. We started immediately with a Gillette case study, which taught us how they work in multifunctional teams. They strongly value organization and feedback; every day had an agenda and a request for feedback. We interns wanted more interactive learning, so they built additional skits and Q&A sessions into the following days. We wanted them to use fewer water bottles, so they got us tap water. I was impressed by their professionalism and their desire to constantly improve.
It is challenging to truly see an organization from outside. Many companies say they value people. I started to detect a difference during my interview, but their value for people became perfectly clear during training. In three days of general training, they took us out for dinner and drinks twice. They brought in senior management to speak to us. They brought all of the interns to London for general training so that we could get to know each other. And they gave us loads of free products and access to the company store J.
Then I had two days of finance training. We took a closer view at P&G’s divisions and structure. We also spent a significant amount of time learning some of their acronyms—far too many to count. It’s like another language. They take an income statement and rename practically every term into P&G language. We also reviewed finance basics—Babson had prepared me well. Employees with different finance functions also spoke to us about the variety of finance positions within P&G. Finally, we went out for dinner and drinks with the finance managers, although there were more finance managers than interns.
The makeup of the interns this week feels a bit like Babson. P&G prioritizes diversity, and summer interns represent over fifteen countries outside the UK. However, now I am in the minority—I am one of only two Americans. We come from about twenty different schools and work in seven different departments, although every team is comprised of people from different departments. I’m looking forward to my project, although I only have general knowledge of it at this point. I’ll describe it more fully once I know more. However, this is a legitimate project. If I wasn’t doing it as an intern, another employee would be completing it.
I spent a dark 4th of July with some fellow interns at the King’s Head Pub. I’ve been dubbed the token American, so I explained to them some of our traditions. No fireworks, but I suppose I have a few other benefits from spending my summer in the UK. Until next blog, I’ll sign off with some trivia. Which haircare brand was the first ever to launch a 2 in 1 in the UK, becoming the market leader in four weeks?
