The intern's guide to Zooma's culture

Zooma has a very interesting approach to their company culture, especially for an intern like me who has barely worked in a business environment before.

On the "Being a Zoomer"-page the Q and A's portion clearly states that "instead of asking about Zooma's vision, purpose, mission, profile, positioning, core values and other academic terms, here you find the questions you should ask and the answers that we provide". A little bold and gives a pretty clear understanding of what Zooma doesn't value.

What is a company culture?

A company culture is the "how" behind how everything in the company is done. Both explicitly, through systems and ways of working, and implicitly, through behaviours and how we communicate. It relates to shared core values and affects both employees internally and the company image externally. A strong and positive company culture is important for various reasons. It can help work feel more exciting, and the purpose of it gets more obvious for employees. It can lead to increased employee engagement and innovation, where employees relate more with each other, are driven by similar ideals and where they aren't afraid to share their ideas. It can also affect employee retention. A common reason for employees to leave a workplace today has to do with weak company cultures and how they don't feel a purpose in the workplace.

What does Zooma value?

Being an agency that mainly focuses on being a partner to the customers and guiding them in achieving their digitalisation and onlinification goals, it's very clear that Zooma focuses on being cooperative and knowledgeable. 

They only take in a few customers each year, Zooma does this to make sure they can split their time fairly between their customers and their needs. This also leads to a closer relationship with these customers, which helps further their value of cooperation. 

They're always running experiments on their own website to further their own knowledge about the ever-changing digital space and their customers' needs. When they find something interesting during the experiments, they document it and share it with the rest of us. This is also a recurring thing in the monthly meetings and some of the weekly ones, where we give each other tips or present new tools we've tried out that can be useful for the rest of the company or a specific team. Always striving to better themselves to provide the most relevant best practices to their customers. 

As previous interns have said, the first few weeks are an information overload, where we join every possible meeting imaginable at the company, as well as personal onboarding meetings to help us get started with our own tasks and projects. A recurring theme during all the meetings, no matter who you have a meeting with, is that you are encouraged to ask questions. All the time, to anyone. 

It's not just applied to us interns either; everyone is encouraged to ask questions frequently. I think that was the first thing that I noticed that showed how much Zooma values teamwork and knowledge sharing.

Benefits of Zooma's company culture.

As I mentioned in the beginning when I defined what a company culture is, a strong one can have many benefits. Zooma shows many of those benefits daily. The first one I noticed was actually already when I was researching Zooma for my internship. I noticed that several people have worked here for a really long time, and some have come back again after leaving (and then stayed a long time). Employee retention was a big green flag for me when I applied. When I started, more benefits showed themselves quickly.

Zooma has a very collaborative environment where you feel included quickly, as I mentioned earlier about asking questions and working in mixed teams of people with different types of expertise. You quickly feel like one of the team; you get actual tasks in projects and are seen as a valuable member to get the projects finished.

You'll have a one-to-one meeting with your supervisor where you can raise any questions or concerns and discuss your progress or challenges. It's usually a very relaxed meeting where they check in with you and make sure you're prioritising the right things and getting the most out of your placement in terms of what you want to do.

Being knowledgeable has been mentioned in this article, but it's also shown in the learning opportunities Zooma provides for the employees. Twice a year the office gets closed so everyone can focus on taking new or refreshing old certifications in Hubspot. Interesting articles are regularly shared (or created) to spread the knowledge within the company. As an intern you also get one day a week to focus on these certifications.

Lastly, they have a lot of fun. Employees are excited about their work and projects in general, which is such a fun experience to be part of. Zooma puts a lot of value in that feeling through various activities (besides picking fun clients to work with).

Friday fika is a weekly activity where we gather over Zoom and talk about our week, and get book tips or song tips; sometimes there are quizzes. It's a cosy meeting where you get to spend time with co-workers you might not see during the week otherwise. They have an activity called "Zoomers + 1" once a year, which I got to join a few weeks ago. We get to bring our choice of a + 1 and go out for a lovely dinner with the entire company. We swapped seats during the evening, so we got to see as many new faces as possible, talked all night and had a lot of fun. There are other excursions and after-work activities planned during the year; depending on when your internship is you might be lucky to be a part of those activities.

My conclusions

Overall, my experience as an intern at Zooma has been incredibly positive. As someone new to the business environment, I found their approach to company culture to be very interesting. I appreciate their focus on cooperation and knowledge-sharing, which is evident in the way they work with clients and conduct internal experiments. 

Zooma's strong company culture has many benefits, including employee retention, a collaborative environment, and learning opportunities. As an intern, I have appreciated the one-on-one time with my supervisors, the opportunity to take certifications, and the fun activities like Friday fika and Zoomers +1. It's clear that Zooma puts a lot of value in making work exciting and creating a positive atmosphere for its employees.

I would highly recommend Zooma to anyone looking for a company with a strong culture that prioritizes collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and fun. If you're looking for a place where you get to be an actual part of the team and work on real projects with highly skilled and kind people, Zooma is definitely the place to be at.