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"Why communications? To expand my skills!"

William Thomas is a management master’s degree student at the University of Namur (UNamur), specialising in marketing. He began his internship on 5th February, joining the team in the Communications department. 

How did you find out about the company and why did you choose us for your work placement? 

It was last year, in fact, that I found out about the company, as part of a class at university. The project I was doing was focused on cybersecurity and it turned out that DNS Belgium was the partner company for this course at UNamur, along with IBM. Then, a few months later, I saw an ad posted on one of the university’s internal portals about an internship in communications. So I jumped at the chance and sent off my application.

Why communications? To expand my skills!

William Thomas, intern in the communications department.

Through my studies, I was already familiar with marketing. And as communications and marketing are linked, I decided to expand my knowledge to include communications so that I could become as complete as possible and, potentially, be able to alternate between the two in the future.   

What was this project all about that you did in partnership with DNS Belgium? 

The topic of the project was cybersecurity. We did a “Hackathon” during which groups of students had to create and then design a service to be made available to a group of “vulnerable” users, selected in advance. Our group elected to work on people aged 65 and over.

It was a very interesting project, because we went through a number of stages, including the initial set-up, creating the tools, the qualitative study and the analysis of the study, the design of the idea, and so on. Our group created “NetWise”, which is a mentoring app focusing on online security between dedicated young people and senior citizens.

It was a really cool project and it also enabled me to learn more about cybersecurity than I had ever studied previously. It also prompted me to choose a course on digital during my Erasmus stay in Norway in the first four months of doing my Master’s 2. Plus, of course, it also meant I got to know DNS Belgium.  

What do you do here in the company? What are the tasks you’re involved in? 

The internship involves numerous different tasks. I do exercises and work on lots of jobs related to the communications profession, such as mailings, website management, creating and revising articles, research, etc. I also take part in meetings on a range of topics. So far, I’m really enjoying the internship and I’m looking forward to learning more. 

Our main business of managing domain names may seem a bit dull and boring to some students. What was the first thing you associated with our organisation? 

It’s true to say, personally, that I found out about DNS Belgium through cybersecurity. It’s a subject I hadn’t studied before last year and so I was keen to learn more about it. However, I have to say that domain names have since become something of great interest for me. Yes, I wouldn’t say it’s all 100% cybersecurity now, but working on domain names has also piqued my curiosity. It’s really interesting to understand how it works, and also to realise that all it takes is one little problem here and suddenly there’s no Internet in Belgium!

An internship at communications is a two-way street. William gets the chance to put his academic knowledge into practice. He gets a taste of what a communications job entails and discovers where his talents lie. Copywriting, sharpening organizational skills, thinking strategically about a campaign approach: it's all part of the job.

Hilde Van Bree, William's internship supervisor.

At the moment, all of the staff are Dutch-speaking. As a French-speaker, do you feel comfortable here? 

Yes, everything’s fine at the moment. I can honestly say that it doesn’t bother me that the people speak Dutch here. If I’ve got something to say, all I have to do is switch to English, which everyone speaks well here. Also, in our team and in addition to English, my work colleagues sometimes even make the effort to speak French, which I very much appreciate. That really gives me the impression that I’m part of the team. 

What are the challenges facing you? What are you struggling with? 

To be honest, there aren’t too many things that give me any problems. The only thing I can think of that’s difficult and challenges me every day is waking up in the morning! Apart from that, everything is going well and I haven’t had any real problems since I started here. My colleagues give me plenty of help. 

What do you dream of doing after you graduate? 

Nothing in particular. I want to start working immediately as soon as I finish. I’d prefer not to waste time and want to get going as soon as I can after university. So there’ll be no gap year for me! 

With this article, we support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.