Career Ready Internship Blog - Hear From Chelsy Learie
Chelsy Learie
Inverclyde’s leading property business, Bowman Rebecchi has welcomed two new interns as part of its partnership with Career Ready – a national social mobility charity that supports young people to get into work.
The programme provides support to young people as they transition from S5 into S6 with a paid month-long internship alongside 18 months of mentoring support from the business.
The property firm welcomed Chelsy Learie as one of two new interns for 2022-23, with the internship taking place across July 2023 based at Bowman Rebecchi’s Inverclyde office in Gourock.
Chelsy shares her insight into the experience with her blog below:
“This year I took part in an internship organized by career ready which is a four-week program that takes place in summer. A company or business will take on some interns every year around Scotland and myself alongside Rhys Morgan got the opportunity to work at Bowman Rebecchi. My mentor this year was Andrew Bowman and I have gained various different skills throughout my 4-week internship.
“I learned all about marketing with the help of Rhys Elliott (Bowman Rebecchi Marketing Apprentice) to post on the business social media accounts and implement our own Facebook ads. At first, I couldn’t get my head around it, but I was given guidance, tips, and pointers on how to complete tasks and fix any mistakes.
“I also learned about the residential lettings business including how to do inventories. Kathleen Docherty (Office Manager) taught me how to use the inventory software at the start, but by the end of the 4 weeks, I was able to confidently go into a house and complete inventories by myself, taking 360 pictures of every room and then uploading them without any help.
“I was also shown different aspects of the architecture business, I created floorplans on AutoCAD with the help of the team who guided me on how to use the software as it was my first time using a programme like this. The team made the drawings for me also and helped me by adding in sizes of every wall on the floorplan. I also sat in a meeting with Marco Rebecchi with clients which gave me an overview of what happens when a client wants something done to their property. I really enjoyed this because it built my confidence, and showed me how to deal with customer service which is something else I will take in later life.
“I also learned about Commercial letting and sales, with Andrew setting me a project which included making brochures, word documents, updating websites, and creating social media posts. Andrew helped a lot with this and with any questions I had or anything I was stuck on he always had answers on how I could improve it and helped me to do so.
“My favourite part was learning about estate agency. I conducted viewings and showed various properties for sale to prospective buyers. At first, I just observed and watched Kathleen show the houses but as I got further into the internship and started to build confidence, I was able to show houses by myself. Over the 4 weeks, two properties got sold to viewers I had done the viewings for. I really enjoyed going to and showing different properties and it was one of my favourite parts of the whole internship.
“When out at viewings with Kathleen, we also got a chance to visit Sir Gabriel Woods Court which is managed by Bowman Rebecchi Lettings, and we really enjoyed talking to the tenants and meeting new people.
“We had many fun experiences during our 4 weeks such as a mini photoshoot that career-ready had set up, during this we had many laughs and great fun. I also got an amazing opportunity to visit the Regal Princess Cruise Ship as part of a marketing project when it was docked in Greenock. I had so much fun doing it and it was definitely the highlight of the experience.
“I want to thank Andrew, my mentor for making this internship such a nice experience. Bowman Rebecchi has been a great workplace to work at and I will take on this experience and skills learned in my later life. This has not felt like four weeks because I have enjoyed it so much, had the best people around and I enjoyed the work I was given.
“The work wasn’t too hard although it was really challenging at points, but I knew I could ask for help if I needed it. This whole experience has really helped me gain confidence as I was so nervous coming into it, but everyone was so lovely it made me less nervous. After a few days, I was gaining more confidence in talking to everyone around the office and even clients which I could have never done at the start.
“I want to thank Bowman Rebecchi for this experience.”