So I have just finished week 3 at my internship, and last week was crazy! We had a Distict Managers (DM) Conference. They hold these conferences once a year to give the DMs and update on the company and what is in-store for the year to come. It lasted for 4 days and it was a little crazy. It was hosted at a nearby hotel. I mostly did whatever needed helping with like setting up tables, passing out freebies (like sweatshirts, jeans, journals, iPads…). And it really was alot of fun! Since I was an associate at Aerie before I came, it is really cool to see the other side of things. I definitely think that working at Aerie has helped me alot during the internship. Since my department is basically communications between corporate and store, I am able to understand some inner workings that involved the team or associates without the team having to explain them to me. For example, the company uses a communication program “ePlan” and also has “AETV” which is a weekly TV show that helps train associates on new bras, jeans and selling practices. Coming from an associate, the TV shows were actually pretty helpful!! I will even have the opportunity to be on the TV show next Friday!! It will be an Aerie video. I am not sure what the focus of the video is yet, but I am super excited!!
Here is a photo of one of the presentations at the conference
This was a Photo area at the conference where you could take your picture and hashtag it #customerfirst. It is part of a new campaign they are running to include associates that work at AE and Aerie locations. They will then compile all the pictures around the end of summer to create a huge American Eagle logo to put in stores!
So now that the conference is over, we are mostly working on clean up. Sending decor back, returning bust forms and clothing used, and re-organizing the store experience closet with all the extra freebies they handed out (the iPads go back to the Tech team of course). We have a few new people joining the Store Ops team too! One started this week during the conference (I can’t even imagine!!) and another will be joining us next week. My mentor said that I will be on-boarding (training) with the new girls so I can learn more about how Store Operations works exactly.
I also had my evaluations. We are requires to do one touch base or TB a week with our mentor. It could be anything we want like a check-up on a project, answer questions you may have or to ask how you are doing. Then every two weeks, HR sends us a self evauation we must fill out. There are five different categories we must rate ourselves and comment on. We then forward it to our mentor who then does the same. Our mentor has a meeting with HR about the self evaluation to discuss, and then afterwards has a meeting with their intern. They are VERY thorough here! But I like that. It makes it a definite growing and learning opportunity. So I had my first TB and self evaluation, both of which went really well! My mentor is one of the head honchos in store ops so he is was really busy before conference. He said that I was very self sufficient which he was busy with conference which is a really good quality to have, but he can see that being a weakness later on. That there may be learning opportunities I may miss because of my self reliance. He also said that I have been a great team player and have been awesome working with everyone in store ops to get what needs to be done, done. I get tasks done very efficiently and am very detail oriented, which is good because my mentor said he isn’t good with the details. He also said I show amazing enthusiasm for the brand and the position and am good at balancing my professional side and my fun side with the team. He said that is important because they all joke around in the office and are all friends inside and out of the workplace. So it is nice to see that I am able to balance and realize when I do need to be professional and get things done. All SUCH GOOD FEEDBACK!!! I was so excited. So that’s all for now! I’ll write again next week to tell of how AETV went!!!
ALBRIGHT ELCDC 