internship success: 14 transformative months at fifth quadrant

I started my internship at Fifth Quadrant back in June 2022, and the past fourteen months have been filled with a breadth of experiences that have taught me lifelong lessons and provided opportunities that I hope will help my long-term career goals. This internship has solidified my pre-existing skills, taught me lots of new ones, and constantly exposed me to new opportunities to apply myself and get outside of my comfort zone.

There were several reasons I choose to apply, and ultimately accept, an internship at Fifth Quadrant:

• Firstly, market research was one of my favourite subjects at Uni and finding a way to apply all the theory in the real world was appealing to me

• Secondly, I was drawn to the company itself and the people. The name is a bit out of the box, and they seemed to work on a big range of different kinds of qualitative and quantitative projects

• The thing that really convinced me was during the hiring process, I was asked to write a short article about my topic of choice with its aim being to gauge my research abilities and writing manner. This said to me that they were looking for someone to be a contributing member of the team and not just an intern to do the grunt work or fetch coffees.

what did i do during my internship?

During my time here, I was given the opportunity to work on a lot of key projects, and also attend various exciting and thought-provoking conferences such as the Qualtrics ‘X4 on Tour’, the ‘AI Online Summit’, and webinars such as ‘Understanding ChatGPT’; as well as training and development sessions, corporate social responsibility activities, and internal social events.

Day-to-day, my internship included routine tasks such as testing discussion boards and questionnaires, sitting in on client meetings and presentations, assisting with report writing, and working with different sets of quantitative and qualitative data. I also had the opportunity to learn and routinely use industry specific platforms, such as Caplena, Q, and VisionsLive.

what have i learnt from my internship?

I learnt a variety of skills and picked up different bits of knowledge along the way. Working collaboratively with the team taught me the importance of communication, and asking the right questions to truly understand the client’s needs and produce meaningful insights.

A project that was instrumental to my development was for an equipment hire provider. I was asked to help analyse participant interviews for key insights and issues, which lead to the creation of customer journey maps and personas, that the client was able to use to form strategic solutions for the business.

Would i recommend an internship with fifth quadrant?

Yes. Ultimately, the environment at Fifth Quadrant taught me to be more proactive and organised, exercise more attention to detail, and further develop my market research skills. My time at Fifth Quadrant will not only help me achieve my long-term career goals, but has had a positive effect on my day-to-day life. The culmination of all the opportunities and challenges, exceeded my expectations as to what the internship would be, in the best way possible.

If you’re interested exploring an internship, or joining the Fifth Quadrant team full time, I’d recommend you take a look at the culture page. If you like what you see, fill in the form and start the process to discover your tomorrrow, today.