Ever wondered what it is like to be an intern at Amazon Pay? Curious about the type of people who thrive in one of the world’s most customer-centric companies?
At the close of their tenure at Amazon Pay in 2019, we hear about the experience of four Amazon Pay interns across the United Kingdom, Germany and Luxembourg. As part of Q&A roundup, these interns give us a window in their day today, insights on the Amazon culture and advice on internships at Amazon. Learn how even in a short term role they get to take on big projects like driving editorial channels and managing email campaign launches for new features. Learn more about what it takes to be an intern at Amazon Pay.
Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
“A world citizen & avid learner. Living abroad for a big part of my life has truly shaped my identity, whether it is my approach to concept or my thirst to learn more every day. Indeed, it made me eager to discover new cultures and meet new people, whom I can learn from. I think it truly kept me grounded and grateful, while allowing me to see the beauty in little things & the importance of the people you surround yourself with.” – Salomé Derome, United Kingdom
“I would describe myself being persistent, ambitious and highly self-motivated. I am always curious to learn about new possibilities and ways to improve, both on an academic and professional level. Away from work, you are likely find me in a London pub or at some sort of music/sport event. I am also a massive football fan and fortunate enough to support my hometown Coventry City…PUSB!” - Matt Wyatt, United Kingdom
“I often describe myself as a multicultural person, I speak 4 languages fluently and I lived in 6 different countries that allowed me to have a global view of the word and find a little piece of myself in every culture that I discovered. My favourite things are to spend time with my family, dance salsa and of course food is another one of my passions” - Julieta Somoya, Luxembourg
Alexandra, Working student in Consumer Marketing in Munich
“The opportunity to have lived in several countries has developed my enthusiasm for different cultures, languages and people’s ways of living. This experience broadened my own horizon, strongly influenced my personal development and taught me that there is a lot we can learn from each other. But no matter where I am located, the language which passionate me the most is the language of music – I love to express my thoughts and feelings using my voice and play guitar.” - Alexandra Weglarz, Germany
Can you tell us about your experience as an intern at Amazon Pay?
“My role is to assist the Head of Marketing for the UK, & IE. This starts with building webinars or new newsletters campaign and continue with managing the blog, the editorial calendar, creating content, and much more… One of the big projects I worked on was an email campaign on Alexa Delivery Notification which I build from scratch on Marketo, build out the attribution, generated a target list & localised it for France, Spain, Italy, Germany & the UK. Two of my favourites projects, was when I worked directly with the US: content creation & the webinar. I think what made those projects so special was the people involved in it, working with an international team and how each of them pushed me to develop new skills, through this internship!” - Salomé Derome, United Kingdom
“My primary role was to help on board and manage the UK SMB portfolio. However, there’s no such thing referring to a “job description” at Amazon Pay. You can be working on many different assignments at any given time which is fantastic! One of my favourite projects was the “attrition programme” where I helped merchants that went ‘offline’. It was great liaise with many different internal and external stakeholders, and no issue was the same which deeply stretched my problem-solving capabilities.” - Matt Wyatt, United Kingdom
Julieta, Digital Marketing Intern in Luxembourg
“I am a digital marketing intern, during my internship I touched different sides of marketing and discovered many ways to interact with consumers. My main mission was to publish content on the French, Italian and Spanish Amazon Pay blogs, organize events, convert leads and run campaigns on Marketo. One of the biggest projects that I formed part of has been the launch of the new Amazon Pay website for France, Italy and Spain doing localization, publication of blog articles and suggestions for the three countries website. I also organized 2 sponsored events in Madrid and Milan and one Amazon Pay event in the Amazon’s office in Madrid. I loved being part of those challenging projects that allowed me to excel myself and deliver results.” - Julieta Somoya, Luxembourg
“I joined the Amazon Pay Consumer Marketing Team as a working student for a period of six months. Located in Munich, I worked on strategies to increase the Brand Awareness of Amazon Pay within the EU5 – UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain. The project, I liked the most was an Awareness Campaign, for which my manager gave me the full responsibility. From banner creation, through placement decisions, to the creation of the landing page and the evaluation of results I got the opportunity to run a project by my own. It was a great feeling to see the results and to be present and visible on a highly competitive placement on the amazon.de webpage. It was fun!” - Alexandra Weglarz, Germany
What advice would you give to yourself if you were starting this internship today?
“An advice I would give myself would be to: not be afraid of making mistakes. Doing an internship at such a big company, I felt pressured to be good at your job the first time around. The truth is that Amazon does not expect that from you, they are more interested in you learning from your mistake by diving deep and working hard to improve yourself every day.” - Salomé Derome, United Kingdom
“I would say having a higher focus on long-term outcomes and not being afraid to take ownership from Day 1! When I first started at Amazon, I tended to have a sole focus and be driven towards instant short-term results. However, over my tenure I learnt that sacrificing results in the short-term by identifying and fixing ‘pain-points’, will help scale and have a larger positive impact on the business in the long-term.” - Matt Wyatt, United Kingdom
“The main advice is to be confident and not to be afraid of asking questions because other Amazonians are always happy to help in any situation! Just enjoy and show the best of yourself!” - Julieta Somoya, Luxembourg
How has this internship helped you develop your career?
“This internship opened my eyes on how the different fields in Marketing and which one I would see myself most & increase my interest to stay in e-commerce. Most importantly, it allowed me to develop a range of technical skills such with email campaign management but also essential soft skills that I will be able to use in throughout my career.” - Salomé Derome, United Kingdom
Matt, Channel Partner intern & Salomé Associate Marketing intern in London
“There’s too many points to list in a short answer! One thing definitely coming with me in my future career is the foundations of the leadership principles. When you understand the values and read deeply into the thinking, it can really help you raise the bar and set the highest standards on your performance.” - Matt Wyatt, United Kingdom
“This internship has clearly open the marketing doors to me, and I can now explore a wide range of opportunities thanks to the heavy baggage of knowledge that I have thanks to this experience. It gave me the chance to be autonomous and step out of my comfort zone which are very important traits to have a successful professional life.” - Julieta Somoya, Luxembourg
What do you enjoy about the Amazon culture?
“What enjoy the most about the Amazonian culture is the importance of learning & being curious all the time. In my opinion, it is something very valuable for a company to help employees develop new skills, it makes people more creative and opened to change. For instance, if you are doing marketing but want to learn more about a certain subject as html, and Java Script, you are more than welcomed to be curious and learn about it. Once you are a part of Amazon, you have seminars organised all the time to learn from others Amazonians, whether it is concepts, soft skills or technical one’s. One of the coolest experiences I had was during the sustainability week in LHR16: a speaker from a recycling facility explained how they sort & recycle; this was followed by an introduction to non-obvious ways on how we can have a positive impact on the environment.” - Salomé Derome, United Kingdom
“Amazon is always pushing the boundaries for new ideas that benefit the customer. A big stand out for me is that no matter what stage of your career, if you have that next big idea and can provide a well-documented business case, then Amazon will give you the platform to run with it. You are trusted and encouraged by your peers to think big and take complete ownership! Being pushed to have that much responsibility during an internship allows you to learn so much.” - Matt Wyatt, United Kingdom
“I did not expect Amazon to have such a strong culture and having real values driving the way employees think and work with each other. It is a true advantage to work in a pleasant environment where your colleagues are always there to help you. Amazon has a really fast paced environment, days go by really quickly.” - Julieta Somoya, Luxembourg
“Through my fascination toward cultures, I really enjoyed the internationality at Amazon and the easiness to connect with colleagues from all over the world. The openness and kindness created a great atmosphere and a place, where I liked to go and spend time in. I got to know beautiful people, who inspired me.” - Alexandra Weglarz, Germany
What is your favourite leadership principle and why?
“To me, one of the leadership principles that makes Amazon so special is the ownership principle. I think it does not only mean that people trust you it also is chance for you to challenge yourself and giving always insisting on higher standards than your last project. I am someone who loves problem solving and through being an owner you can find small ways to optimise an existing process, and see the impact on the audience through reporting.” - Salomé Derome, United Kingdom
“Bias for action. Time is our most precious resource. What we do with time defines who we are and what we accomplish. Making decisions quickly that can be reversed if they don’t work is key. Amazonians refer this as the “two-way-door approach” which I truly believe in. I always aim to get things done quickly and don’t like wasting time.” - Matt Wyatt, United Kingdom
“My favorite principle and the one that illustrates the best my internship is “Invent and simplify”. Nothing is took for granted in Amazon and there are always more ways to improve. Everyone has a chance to suggest and bring new ideas to the business no matter which position you have. In this fast paced environment everyone is reactive to change and knows how to approach better new processed and ideas that can be beneficent for the company.” - Julieta Somoya, Luxembourg Learn more about working at Amazon Pay through our career site.