My first formal professional experience, and three roles inside it: internship, Content Designer, then Lead Digital Designer.
I had skills, projects and income, but no company on my record, so I proposed the internship myself. Fully on-site, almost no creative control. The marketing manager set concept and direction and I executed it.
That constraint taught me more than freedom would have. I started seeing why an offer is presented a particular way, why some text has to dominate, why a beautiful design is not automatically a good campaign design.
The internship converted after a month. Service packages were firming up and content volume was climbing, so my scope widened into social content, campaign material, promotion and general company communication, and gradually into having opinions about presentation rather than only executing it.
Social, campaigns, brochures, web content, podcast visuals, studio content, offer presentation, reporting and creative direction. I worked directly with senior management on decisions that were not purely visual: what gets promoted, how an offer is presented, what the audience should see first.
The KPI was inbound enquiries and phone calls, not engagement. Campaigns ran as variations across different pages, formats and creatives, so iteration became routine: run it, read the response, change it.
Sitting close to the immigration and legal teams gave me real domain knowledge: application processes, client journeys, document flows, service packages. It went quiet for three years, then returned in PF Apply and became central at Gate NL.