2.0 Internship Preparations

 

2.1 Selection Of Company

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before being introduced to Seeds, which is an online platform for Taylor's Student to find internship and job openings, I had a hard time finding and deciding where I would like to work at as I had too many choices and interests, but after I have been introduced to Seeds, it was not so hard for me to choose anymore as the university have stated that they offer two types of placement for us: university placement and own placement. University placement is when we choose any companies that offer internships and liaise with the university itself, while own placement is when we choose any companies that offer internship, but does not liaise with the university.

 

As for me, I prefer to go for university placement as it is less complicated for me to apply to, unlike own placement, I had to propose the company of my own choice to the university first and had to wait for their approval before proceeding to the next step. So, since I chose for university placement, Seeds provided around twenty-five choices of companies to work for and we can choose a maximum of five companies according to our priority.

 

Before applying for my five companies of choice on Seeds, I had to upload a formal picture of me and fill in my online resume first so that the companies that I applied for will know how I look like and what my details are. Therefore, I had chosen Zalora Malaysia as my first choice, Beauty Guide as my second choice, Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia as my third choice, See Hoy Chan as my fourth choice, and Mistermind International as my last choice.

 

Apart from that, I also applied to other various random companies during a career fair at my university, some of them includes Citibank Malaysia, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts, Unilever Malaysia, Zalora Malaysia as they were also there, and many others that I randomly applied as I feared that none of them would hire me for some reasons, even when I had a CGPA of 3.86.

 

A few weeks later, I received a call from three companies that I have applied for. The first one was Mistermind International, the second one was Ogilvy & Mather, and the third one was Zalora Malaysia. These companies were my fifth, third, and first choice respectively. Mistermind International was an event management company, I chose it because I thought it would be a fun experience getting to go to events that they are organising. I went for an interview with them not long after they called me, and they offered me the internship opportunity on the spot with a monthly allowance of RM500, but I did not accept it on the spot and asked them to give me a duration of a week to decide as I would like to try my luck with Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia and Zalora Malaysia first, which were obviously the companies that I would like to work for more as both of them are more recognised and were multinationals, which means it would be better to have one of these two companies on my resume.

 

A few days later, I have decided to turn down the offer from Mistermind International as Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia and Zalora Malaysia had called me in for an interview. I was taking quite a risk to turn down Mistermind International as I have not even gotten the internship opportunity from neither Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia and Zalora Malaysia, but I believed in myself that I would get it if I am prepared for the interview. This was went I did more research on how I can impress the interviewer when being interviewed by him or her.

 

But as the recruiter for Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia went outstation, they did not get back to me on when they wanted to interview me, so I then went for an interview with Zalora Malaysia a few days later. Same as Mistermind International, Zalora Malaysia also offered me an internship opportunity on the same day that I was being interviewed, but I could not decide on the spot because I wanted to wait for Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia first because I wanted to work at both these multinationals equally, so I asked Zalaro Malaysia to give some time to decide and they asked me to get back by the next few days since they had a lot of applicants that wanted my spot.

 

I then emailed Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia, but then the recruiter was still outstation as I received an automated email saying she was away. The reason why I wanted to work for Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia was because it was a very reputable company for advertising, and had offices in all over the world, even though they only give a monthly allowance of RM500 compared to Zalora Malaysia, which give RM400 more than Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia each month.

 

At last, I have decided to take the offer from Zalora Malaysia as I did not want to risk myself by turning down Zalora Malaysia and went for an interview with Ogilvy & Mather Malaysia, but did not get offered by them. I also thought through Zalora Malaysia and see the advantages in working with them, such as getting an allowance of RM700 cash monthly, and RM200 in the form of store credit where I can use to shop on Zalora Malaysia's website, and I also like Zalora Malaysia since they had a lot of expatriates working for them and that most of their employees were very young from what I can see when I went to their office in Kuala Lumpur for the interview. Since I have accepted the offer, I was already secured with an internship job around two months before my internship period, compared to some of my friends that were still worried as they were not offered an internship opportunity yet. This is definitely a relief for me as I do not have to worry anymore.

 

2.2 Trainings & Workshops

 

During our fourth semester, Taylor's University Career Service Center (CSC) had organised a lot of workshops for us in order to prepare us for our internship. We will get a total of 5% of internship grade by attending all of these workshops, which is definitely important in my point of view as I am targeting to get an A for my intership grade and 1% is considered very important to me as it can change a grade from a B to an A, and thus I have attended all of the workshops. Other than that, these workshops really build up our confidence in going for interviews so that we could all get a better chance of getting the internship job.

 

There were six workshops that I have attended, and they were:

 

1. Writing Effective Cover Letter & Resume

 

2. Internship 101

 

3. Interview Skills: Get Hired

 

4. Professional Image & Executive Presence

 

5. Ethics & Etiquette At Work

 

6. Ace Your Internship

 

2.3 Expectations & Goals

 

There are many things that I hope to gain from going for internship. Firstly, I hope to gain lifelong skills that will benefit me in the future. Not only that, but I also hope to widen my networks with all of the employees in Zalora Malaysia as there is always a possibility of working with them again in the future. Other than that, I also hope that my roles and responsibilities will somehow be useful for me, and that Zalora Malaysia will give me a real job to do as an intern so that I can challenge myself and not be the type of intern that only does coffee or tea for their bosses. Lastly, I also hope to learn how a large organisation function and work together to make everything a success by generating a lot of revenue.