When in Manila has witnessed a number of milestones lately in the past few months. We reached two million followers on Facebook. We launched new niche pages on Facebook: When in Manila Style and Beauty, When in Manila People, When in Manila Tech, When in Manila Pets, When in Manila Food, When in Manila People, When in Manila, Adventures, and more.
We’re producing more videos now. We also launched the When in Manila Meet the Team blog series in an effort to engage with the readers on a more personal level.
One of our biggest milestones is finally launching the internship program!
We’ve gotten inquiries in the past from students who wanted to intern with us. Internships are promising opportunities for students to get hands-on learning experiences while still in school. It’s a great way for them to know more clearly what career track they’d want to take even before graduating college.
Personally, joining When in Manila is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made as a college student. I was able to apply the things I learned in class to whatever work I was doing for When in Manila. In the same way, I was able to integrate lessons learned in When in Manila to classes I was taking in college. I wrote about the five ways joining When in Manila changed my life in this blog post, which I hope many students would be able to relate to.
Through WhenInManila.com, I was also able to get mentorship from our founder, Vince. I met so many inspiring people who taught me so much! I really enjoy the work and the company culture here, and I hope the interns would feel the same way.
Vince Golangco, founder of WhenInManila.com, answers questions from the interns of Batch 2
The interns we’ve had in the previous batches contributed so much to the WhenInManila.com family. Most of them continue to contribute today. We’re so grateful to be part of their personal milestones. We’re also grateful for the friendships we’ve forged with them.
Many of them were able to meet, interview, or work with their favorite local and international celebrities like Shawn Mendez, Maine Mendoza, the cast of Encantadia, Gerald Anderson, various NBA and PBA players, and more.
Some of them were also sent to all-expenses-paid trips to beautiful resorts in Palawan, Tagaytay, Batangas, and more. They also got to pursue dream projects like featuring restaurants, local brands, and covering exclusive events.
Our Batch 2 interns munching on snacks before their flight! They went to Palawan with When in Manila Mae.
They are always credited for the works they submit, so the internship helps them expand their own portfolios. After the internship program is over, we even love referring them to our brands they apply for.
This internship program was carefully designed to be flexible, fun, and very hands-on. It’s also very important to us that the tasks assigned to you match your skill set and your own personal passions and advocacies.
If you are interested in this internship program, here are some links you can check out:
- The WIM Squad Facebook Group:Â https://www.facebook.com/groups/WIMsquad/
- The works of our interns:Â https://www.wheninmanila.com/author/wheninmanila-com-intern/
- If you’re interested what you would get out of this internship, this might help!
But don’t just take my word for it. I might be a bit biased! If you want to know what our graduates think about the internship program, these might help. (P.S. They weren’t forced to write these!) 😉
- https://www.wheninmanila.com/the-wimtern-experience-our-favorite-moments-with-wim/
- https://www.wheninmanila.com/the-best-decision-i-made-is-becoming-a-wimtern/
- https://www.wheninmanila.com/the-wimterns-recall-their-favorite-parts-of-their-internship-graduation/
- https://www.wheninmanila.com/our-wimterns-talk-about-the-moment-they-met-their-fave-celebs/
- https://www.wheninmanila.com/no-goodbyes-just-see-you-soons-the-wimterns-batch-2-graduation/
- https://www.wheninmanila.com/wimterns-meet-our-first-batch-of-interns/
Frequently Asked Questions
1.) My course isn’t related to Marketing or Communications. Could I still apply?
Definitely! As long as you possess the appropriate skills, we’d love to have you on board. But please note that if you’re doing this internship as part of your school requirement and you’re currently taking a course that is unrelated to Marketing and Communications, it is your responsibility to talk to your professors and program advisers if your internship hours would be credited.
2.) I’m not a college student. Could I still apply?
Yes! This internship program was initially designed for college students, but we had a number of inquiries from high school students and graduates who want to intern with us. We are open to accepting interns who are not college students. However, please not that this is not a paid internship. This is something we want to be upfront with as early as the application process.
3.) OJT/Internship is required in my course for junior students, but I’m still a freshman/sophomore. Could I still apply?
Yes! But this could be tricky. Are you planning to take this internship as a credited course? (Meaning, are you planning to intern now, and have it credited next year or next semester?) Or do you plan to take this as an uncredited internship? (Meaning you could definitely write it in your resume and have us write a recommendation letter from you in the future, but it won’t be credited as units in your school?)
If you plan to take this as a credited course, it would be up to you to talk to your profs/advisers about it. I had a friend who took her internship the semester before it was required. She tried and failed to have it credited during the semester where she officially enlisted for the internship. She had to take her internship all over again–this time with another company.
Of course, she benefitted from all the learning experiences from two internships.
But we want to avoid unexpected problems with the crediting of your internships. If you are planning to have your internship credited but are not yet in the sem/year required for Internship/OJT, please make sure to ask permission from your professor/program adviser. It would be best to have their written permission just to be sure that you won’t have problems in the future.
If you are planning to take this as an uncredited internship, go ahead and apply!
4.) I’m already busy with academics, orgs, and a part-time job. How demanding will the internship be?
5.) What’s the minimum number of hours?
200 hours.
When in Manila would be spending a considerable amount of time and resources teaching, mentoring, setting up accounts, et cetera. If, for example, you commit only 50 hours of internship, this might mean that majority of the hours would be used up on the setting up instead of the actual work. Naturally, you could exceed 200 hours. 200 hours is just the minimum.
6.) How long do I have to finish 200 hours?
Usually around four months. Join the WIM Squad Facebook group to be updated on specific dates and deadlines. (They’re not the same for all batches.)
7.) Am I expected to go to an office? Could you describe what the work schedule would be like?
Yes. We expect our interns to meet with us when we do restaurant features and cover events. We also have events in our office in our partner venue, Penbrothers. That’s where we’ll hold team building activities and workshops on Saturdays and Sundays. (https://www.penbrothers.com/neo/)
However, you are not required to do all your work in the office. We want to make this as flexible as possible, especially since we understand that you’ll be juggling internship duties and other kinds of school work. We wouldn’t want to waste your time asking you to go to the office after your school hours (imagine the traffic and the transpo expenses!) if you could do your work at home or anywhere you want.
We designed the internship to be output-based. One of the things that Vince, When in Manila’s founder, always emphasizes is the importance of working smart instead of simply working hard. If you find a smart and efficient system of finishing an article in two hours instead of four, go for it!
Just to give you an idea what we mean by output-based, let’s say you apply to write for us.
An article like this (“How to Start a Blog: 10+ Helpful Tools and Tips”) would be credited as five hours. After making twenty articles that are similar to this, you’d already be done with your internship!
BUT we highly recommend adding more variety to your internship program, so you’re encouraged to collaborate with interns from other teams such as the Marketing Team, Photography Team, Graphics Team, and Videography Team. You could also cover events, visit museums, go on walking food trips, and more! As early as now, some of the admins are already excited to collaborate with the interns! (Myself included! 🙂
The possibilities are endless. You’ll receive the list of the tasks you could do and the corresponding number of hours that will be credited to you once you are officially accepted as one of our interns. We want to make it as exciting and enriching as possible.
Also, if you have a dream project that would require more time and effort than what is written in the table we’ll send out to our accepted interns, you have the option to request for more credit. Just email us a pitch prior to working on the article.
8.) Wait–this is not a paid internship?! So what do I get out of this?
Good question! Let me enumerate them. These are some of the perks of a WhenInManila.com intern and contributor:
- Big audience
Imagine spending hours writing an article, only to find that just two people have read it (you and your mom). We get MILLIONS of readers per month, and we also promote your article on our social media accounts, which also have millions of followers, fans and readers.
- VIP events
Our interns get invites and VIP access to the biggest and most exclusive events. From front row access to concerts, sporting games, clubs, bars and other top events, our interns usually get the red carpet treatment.
- Learn to write / blog / SEO and more
We train each of our interns in the most professional and up-to-date ways to increase readership to their own blogs. We also teach many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics that will ensure more readers to their blogs.
- Great professional experience for your resume
Our writers have gone on to get top positions at top global and local firms. The experience of writing for a top online magazine and digital brand is one that can translate to a better job for you with top companies.
- Meet new people
You get to meet amazing, driven and interesting people as you feature new events, restaurants, concerts and more. You’ll meet young entrepreneurs starting out new businesses as well as seasoned veterans willing to show you a thing or two about what they do. But other than just meeting people through interviews on your features, you’ll also be part of our community and meet other writers, photographers, travel junkies and adventure seekers like you. You’ll also gain access to a huge interconnected network that we at WhenInManila.com share throughout our thousands of features in and around Manila.
If you have questions or concerns that were not addressed in this post, please leave a comment in this thread:
Due to the volume of emails and questions I get, I do have a special request: please review this blog post and the comment section in WIM Squad thoroughly to make sure that your questions were not addressed yet.
About When in Manila
In case you’re interested to get to know about the company, here are some facts about us. WhenInManila.com gets up to and over TEN MILLION (10,000,000+) IMPRESSIONS PER DAY based on an audit by a globally leading digital marketing firm. This included over SIX MILLION (6,000,000+) direct views per month on our website, along with our social media outlets which have very active communities of TWO MILLION (2,000,000+) Fans on Facebook.com/WhenInManila, 100,000+ Followers on Twitter.com/WhenInManila and 175,000+ followers on Instagram.com/WhenInManila, which from these alone already garner over 50 million social media impressions per week. We were recently ranked within the 100 MOST VIEWED SITES in the Philippines by Alexa as well as ranked among the top blogs in the “100 Pinoy Blogs that Matter” list.
