Ellen O'Neill, HR Intern at Applegreen

Why did you choose Applegreen for your internship

While I was researching various companies to do my internship at, Applegreen really appealed to me. It seemed like a nice, fast paced environment to work in. Being a smaller company, I thought I would gain an invaluable experience as the only HR intern, meaning more responsibility and thorough training, which I can now vouch for.

As well as this, one major thing that stood out to me about Applegreen was its people focused culture and core values. From research, my understanding was that Applegreen put their people first and value them and their progression. I have been here for nearly 6 months and can confidently say that my voice feels heard which is very important to me!

What have been your favourite moments during your internship

Although I have had countless memorable experiences at Applegreen thus far, one stand-out moment for me would have to be the HR trip to Belfast to meet the team from Welcome break. This was a great opportunity to get to know the team in the UK, it also allowed us to bond as a team.

It was great to see how both teams could collaborate more in the future and hear about the projects they are currently working on.

What has been your favourite projects you’ve worked on since joining the company

Luckily since I have joined, I have been part of many exciting projects and tasks. There have been so many learning experiences. I have gained a lot of exposure in the area of compliance and reporting. I have learnt about the insightful results data can produce for a company and how best to analyse them.

As well as this, I have been involved in recruitment processes and have sat in on interviews for various roles. This is one area of HR that I was familiar with before joining and definitely had an interest in getting more exposure to during my time here.

How do you measure success from this internship

As days and weeks passed by, I gradually gained more confidence in my ability to do various tasks and in turn more tasks were delegated to me. Ultimately, when I think about measuring the success from this internship, being handed responsibility of tasks knowing your teammates have full confidence in you completing it to a high standard is definitely one way to measure it for me.

I joined Applegreen in September as the HR intern for the Retail Operations team and in December I was introduced to the Group HR team to gain further exposure, working with them for 2 half days a week. Another way I would measure success would be that the team asked to have me work with them for two full days from February.