Sam Mirzaei

I am a fresh Bachelor of Commerce graduate from the University of Wollongong in Dubai with a specialisation in marketing. While studying in university, I was eager to apply my classroom knowledge to the real world, and so I sought out internships. Currently, I have 1 year and 8 months of internship experience at various companies.

I am constantly seeking to learn and grow my knowledge in the field of business, sales and marketing. My career goal is to become an industry expert and eventually work with large, diverse teams and spearhead global projects. My excellent performance in my previous internship and work experiences show that I am capable of successfully taking on responsibilities, meeting deadlines and working in teams.

Marketing Intern at Artezaar.com Online Art Gallery from July 2021-April 2022

• At Artezaar, I managed the online product catalogue by working extensively with Shopify and Canva to upload new products to the website as well as making the necessary amendments to existing products. This also involved a lot of SEO techniques including the use of meta descriptions, meta tags and alt‑text to help push the product pages higher up on Google search rankings.
• I used Facebook Business Manager to schedule Instagram and Facebook posts in advance, this involved writing creative captions for each post and researching relevant and popular hashtags to use.
• I learnt all about SEO and helped optimize over 1000 images for the website by composing relevant alt‑text for each image, adding search‑engine friendly file names, and compressing the size of the image. This was all done to increase the search engine ranking of the website. I worked with a team of two fellow interns for this SEO endeavor and we coordinated and completed the work together. This taught me about how to work effectively in a team.
• I managed the company TikTok. I would edit and alter raw footage to create visually pleasing videos about Artezaar's art classes which I would then post to the company's TikTok account. I would also write descriptive captions for each TikTok post talking about Artezaar's services. Additionally, I would research popular hashtags to use in order to maximise TikTok views.
• I assisted in representing Artezaar at two major art exhibitions: World Art Dubai and DIFC art nights. I helped with set‑up, dealing with logistical issues, talking to potential customers, constantly filming clips for the social media pages, assisting with executing our brand activations, livestreaming the events to our social media pages, etc. This experience helped me hone my multitasking skills.
• Reported to the two co‑founders regularly and discussed strategies and ideas with them during meetings and calls.
• I attended some of Artezaar's art classes in order to film aesthetically pleasing video clips to post on the social media pages.
• Overall, working at Artezaar I learned about marketing, digital media and team work.

Mystery Shopper Intern at IFH Inspirators for Hospitality from January 2017-December 2019

• Between 2017 and 2019, I worked at IFH for the following months: June and October 2017, March, April, May, September, October 2018, October, November, December 2019.
• Here I was tasked with being a mystery shopper for hotels, this involved calling them to ask for room rates and pretending that I was looking to book a hotel. This was to test the hotel's customer service quality and how much information they provide.
• I was given scenarios to work with, such as pretending to be a business manager booking a hotel meeting room for a project or exhibition, or pretending to be a husband booking a luxurious hotel for an anniversary.
• I would then take notes and compile my findings about each call I made.
• What I learned here was how to think fast as I would often have to add more detail to the scenario and ask different questions based on how the person on the other end of the call was responding to me.
• I also learned about the hotel industry and what good customer service is meant to be like.

President of the Photography Club at Al Mawakeb School from September 2015-September 2017

• As president I was responsible for assigning tasks and duties to other members of the club,
• I would coordinate schedules and ensure that members of the club would be available to take photos of major school events and then edit those photos.
• I would myself also attend school events to take aesthetic photos to be uploaded on the school website.
• I was responsible for editing and enhancing photos so that they could be uploaded to the school website.
• I would vet and assess applications from new students wanting to join the club.

Actor (Extra) at Axiom Telecom in May 2014

• Actor (extra) in a fathers day commercial for Telecom in 2014. My audition consisted of portraying various facial expressions and emotions.
• On the shooting day, I had to follow instructions from the director as well as work with the other extras. This experience helped me gain confidence in front of cameras and taught me how to adapt to a working atmosphere among people who were strangers.

I graduated from the University of Wollongong in Dubai with a Bachelor of Commerce Degree and a specialisation in marketing. My degree involved learning about business and commerce at large along with taking specialised marketing‑focused subjects. Almost every subject I have taken involves working in groups, so I have learnt a lot about effective teamwork.

Additionally, the university is culturally diverse so I also learnt how to work with people from different nationalities and backgrounds. Our projects have ranged from creating our own brand/product to conducting thorough research about existing companies and their marketing strategies. The final capstone subject that I had to take in order to graduate involved working in a group where each member is from a different major (e.g.

Accounting, Finance, Management, etc). We had to play a simulation game where we were a business trying to navigate a management change and trying to be sustainable at the same time. My team and I successfully completed the game, making profits and earning a high green rating in all 4 levels of the game.

Overall, my degree has taught me a lot about marketing techniques, why sustainability is important and the current competitive landscape.