Two weeks.
That was all it took to go from knowing nothing about digital assets to directly helping different teams with PR, research and administrative tasks.
For context, I am a second-year mechanical engineering student so working as an intern for a PR consultancy was very intimidating, to say the least. Considering my degree is about mathematics, thermodynamics and designing solutions, the prospect of learning how to pitch the ideas of companies that specialised in digital assets and fintech was definitely outside my comfort zone.
But here’s how eventful the two weeks turned out to be.
Week 1: Settling in, building momentum and learning new skills
The first day started like any other first day, involving setting up tools that were needed for communicating with my new team members and getting acclimated to a day working at YAP Global.
One of the more memorable —perhaps daunting– tasks I had on my first day was diving into two Google Meet calls with my line manager, followed by a Winedown session with the London and New York teams.
For someone completely new to the company, being on call with two teams “across the pond” took some time to process.
Fortunately, we had a fun icebreaker where I had prepared two truths and one lie for the teams to guess, making my self-introduction considerably easier.
All in all, it was an enjoyable experience for the first day. Learning the basics
Given my background was completely different to YAP’s area of expertise, my first challenge was to understand the world that YAP operated in. Needless to say, as an engineering student, terms like stablecoins, blockchains and tokenomics were completely foreign to me. At times, reading through crypto news felt like learning a new language.
Alongside learning the terminology of the industry, I was handed my first major task: researching potential candidates to speak at the upcoming DAA closed-door forum in September.
This research task had me diving into the UK’s digital asset ecosystem and searching for influential spokespeople, including regulators, bankers and policymakers. The more research I did, the more I realised that the task became less about finding names and more about understanding each candidate’s background, career and suitability.
Week 2: R&D (Research and Delivery)
The second week was where the real challenges began. With the DAA outreach completed, I was assigned three more tasks: finding crypto journalists for the upcoming European Blockchain Conference; newsjacking private equity deals and diving into the company’s CRM to gain an understanding of our funnel of potential clients and projects we’re keeping an eye on. Despite the busy workload, I found myself enjoying the challenges of learning new skills such as newsjacking; which required me to quickly understand the latest news stories, pick out what was relevant to the client and summarise the story within a set timeframe.
A highlight of the second week would definitely be the team lunch where we went to Biang Biang, a place that served authentic Chinese noodles. The food was delicious but what I enjoyed most about the team lunch was being able to interact with the team outside a work environment.
Rounding off the week involved completing some administrative tasks within our CRM, a reminder that some of the more important aspects of PR and crypto are not always glamorous.
Final Takeaway
Honestly, a fortnight isn’t a long time.
But in that short time, I learned that good PR and marketing are about more than just communicating an idea to an audience; they require a combination of research, timing and understanding who you are trying to reach. Two weeks was long enough for me to go from Googling unfamiliar candidates to writing personalised invitations to them. Furthermore, it was enough time to discover that the best way to learn about a new industry is simply to jump right into it.
Perhaps one of the best surprises during the internship was realising that the research, problem-solving and analytical skills that I use in engineering were more transferable to PR than I initially thought.
Last but not least, I would like to thank the whole team at YAP Global for making me feel welcome during this internship and guiding me through the numerous challenges along the way.
— By Shi-Hong Zhuang
