Success Stories: Aliisa Myllymäki & Gubbe

Welcome to the highlights of our Growth Hacking Internship program! ✨

So far, two companies we've partnered with have shared their success stories. Now, it's time to explore the view from the other side of the bridge. So let’s hear from Herizon’s growth hacking interns about their experiences.

We interviewed Aliisa Myllymäki, a student at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences and a current Growth Hacking Intern at Herizon.

We paired Aliisa with Gubbe, a company providing care services across Finland, and here are Aliisa’s thoughts on her collaboration with her company and Herizon over the past two months.

We'll start with a highlight that Aliisa shared with us:

When I started my internship, I was hoping to gain experience in my own field, IT. 

Realistically, I believe this internship taught me a lot more and opened me to different fields and career opportunities than any IT job would have. I hope other interns see the potential and opportunities of joining this internship, even if on the surface it seems to not align with your future career plans. The knowledge and confidence I gained at Gubbe is something I doubt I would have ever gotten if I didn’t explore things outside of my desired field.

How has your working experience been?

My case company Gubbe welcomed me to their team with open arms right at the beginning. The first couple weeks I felt unsure of the whole process, but soon everything clicked when I was assigned to gain more leads from two specific areas. 

The task of getting new recruitment applications from those areas became completely mine, and being given such responsibility gave me the confidence to pour my everything into that task, despite it being outside my comfort zone in the beginning. I quickly learned that nobody actually knows everything or every correct way to do things. At first, I felt unequipped to reach out to organizations, potential leads and applicants since I had no experience with recruiting or marketing before starting my internship.

During my 12-weeks internship I have had to step up and gotten to show how quickly I adapt to different situations and can handle different tasks. I can confidently say that my time at Gubbe gave me invaluable experience working in the start-up world, in a fast-paced environment. 

Have you had any success cases at work that you'd want to share?

I started my work with cold-calling and emailing organizations and companies in the specific areas I was targeting. This technique didn’t generate leads like hoped, so I moved to social media. I started posting to Facebook groups of those areas, in hopes of reaching young people or anyone interested in the job. This was a success and within just one week the lead count increased by 500% from those specific areas, rising from 2 a week to 12 a week!

One of my personal growth achievements during the 12-week internship was that in my week 8 I successfully interviewed an applicant without any previous experience in recruitment!

How has the collaboration been with Herizon?

The materials on Herizon’s side are wonderful and very detailed, which I found very reassuring and helpful. The first couple weeks however are the most difficult in the internship and at the same time most crucial for getting a good start. So, I think the support from Herizon is there, but personalizing the goals and milestones when you had never heard of such before was difficult, especially when we had to do it right away to get the internship started. 

At the beginning I just did things according to the examples, having no idea what it all actually meant. Slowly during the weeks, I started to figure out the sheet, OKRs and milestones. This has also been a challenge because working in a fast-paced start-up, things change very quickly.

Herizon has also provided us interns with weekly meetings, sometimes it is to talk through what we have done ourselves, and sometimes there is a guest to tell their story. I have liked the guest visits quite a bit and gained new insight from their stories. I like to do things quite independently, but I enjoyed knowing that if I require help or someone to talk to, Herizon got my back. 

If I was to join the Herizon Growth Hacking Program again as an intern, I would be more open-minded in the beginning. I feel the start of my internship would have gone a lot smoother.

Would you recommend other UAS students to join this GH program as well? If yes, why?

I would recommend this program for sure. It gives such a good chance to experience the 'real world' and working in (at least in my case) a quick paced environment. Of course students during courses get to do projects but it is still very far from the actual work.

I also recommend this program for people who perhaps don't see Growth Hacking as their own. I knew nothing about growth hacking, marketing or recruiting when I started as a software developer student but this internship gives interns a chance for a quick deep dive into a work environment and you will for sure learn something valuable even if the program isn't exactly 'in your field'!

Aliisa, thank you for participating in our Growth Hacking Internship Program and we wish you progress and success in your current and upcoming projects! 💜