5.0 Internship Reflections
5.1 First Day Of Internship (On-boarding Process)
My first day of internship, which was on Monday, the 3RD of August, went unexpectedly smooth. I woke up as early as 7AM to get ready and left my house at 8AM so that I could reach the office before 9AM in order to make a good first impression towards others, especially to my bosses and supervisor. I also left early to spare some time in case I got lost while driving all the way from Ara Damansara to Sungai Besi for the first time, which roughly took around 45 minutes. To be honest, I was feeling excited, nervous, and scared all at once for my first day because I really did not know on what to expect; I was excited to be a part of Zalorians, but was also nervous and scared at the same time if my first day turned out to be a failure.
I reached the office around 8.45AM and went to report myself to the receptionist straight. She told me to take a seat while waiting for one of the human resource executives, Maira, to come and hand me over a few documents that I need to complete before moving on to the next step, which includes the Employment Contract, Code Of Conduct Form, and Induction Checklist. I have also prepared my bank account details that they have reminded me to bring for my first day when they emailed me my offer letter as soon as I accepted their internship offer about a month ago. After completing those documents, I was told to wait until one of the marketing executives, Li Qing, came and took me over to my desk area, which was in an open concept as my bosses just sit around me. I really like this type of working environment as it made all of us closer to each other as a family, regardless of race, religion, and nationality, as we were not being separated into different cubicles. In my opinion, this is also a great way to improve employees' efficiency and productivity level as we did not have any chance to do any unnecessary things that were not work-related since we were always being observed by everyone sitting around us.
Li Qing was really nice and welcoming towards me as she even took the courage and time to introduce me as her new intern to most of the employees in Zalora Malaysia. There were so many of them that it was so hard for me to remember any of their names on the spot, but it made me feel comfortable knowing that I am known to the other employees. She also introduced me to two of her existing interns, Esther and Liyana, and told me that I was basically replacing Liyana as she will be finishing her internship soon.
I also had to fill up my details on the Laptop Equipment Form before the information technology department gave me a bag of laptop and mouse, along with my company's email account and password so that I can start performing my responsibilities. After everything settled down, Li Qing, Esther, and Liyana started showing and teaching me on what I should start being familiar with. It was quite hard for me to absorb all at once, especially when everything is totally new to me, but without the guidance and motivation that I have received from them, I do not think that I am able to become the effective and efficient intern that I am now.
5.2 Week 1 - Week 2
The first two weeks of my internship went generally well for me. I was being familiarised to what my usual routines and tasks would be like since the very first day by Esther and Liyana. Most of my tasks required me to use Microsoft Excel, but as I was not so familiar with it, I had quite a hard time in understanding how a certain formula functions at first, and thus, it slowed down my productivity level. I knew that the only way for me to be good in it is to practice and get used to it more. Therefore, I have always volunteered myself to do any tasks that were given by our executives to us interns so that I can improve myself as fast as I possibly could and kept asking, Li Qing, Esther, and Liyana, whenever I am not sure with something even when I might already ask them previously, but it is always better to be safe than to get into trouble by simply doing things wrongly. By doing all this, I became more confident when doing my tasks by myself since I were more familiar with what I should do step by step.
During my first and second week, my tasks were more focused on requesting and creating codes as it was considered the easiest compared to all the other tasks. So, that was where I started familiarising myself with requesting codes using a Google Form created by my executive. This is where I have to state where the promotion is valid on, whether it is applicable to products on the Main Catalogue page only or on the Marketplace page only or on both, and also state what form of promotion am I requesting for, whether it is a coupon or credit. After that, I have to fill up the details of the code I am requesting for, including the name, mechanics, code length, code prefix, code duration, channel, etc. After finish requesting, I would need to print it and ask my supervisor, Kiki or the Managing Director of Marketing, Luca, to approve them for me so that I could proceed on creating it on BOB. Once I have finished creating them on BOB, I will email the respective departments that wanted me create the specific code in the first place.
After working for two weeks, I started realising that the "real-world" marketing department was not what I actually expected it to be as it was quite different from what I have learned from the marketing module that I have taken a few semesters back. I thought that I would be directly involved in finding ways on how to improve the marketing strategy, which includes finding out on what should be sold, at what price should it be sold at, at which type of platform should we sold it at, and what kind of promotions should we hold to boost their sales, but no, I was more like a smaller part of the bigger picture. Even when I felt that my role and responsibilities only played a small part, but it was what that makes Zalora successful, because without creating promotional codes, uploading products on the website, and placing overlays on those products, I believe that customers would not be able to experience the best user experience that they are experiencing now while on Zalora's website and mobile application. For this, I felt very proud of myself because I have contributed to the growth and success for Zalora.
5.3 Week 3 - Week 4
During my third and fourth week, I began to focus more on handling issues regarding overlay, such as creating the overlay attribute, uploading overlays for selected products, removing overlays for selected products, and placing the overlay image itself. With a more recent example, our marketing department has decided to do a sales campaign for Fox Accessories where customers can buy any 3 accessories for RM30. I will then receive a SKU list with all the selected products under Fox Accessories from my executive that was extracted from PET Snapshot, which is an Excel file that has all the details of all the products sold on Zalora, including the brand of that particular product, so all we had to do was filter according to our requirements to get any list that we want.
Before uploading these filtered products onto BOB, we had to create the attribute name first, in this case I named it "buy3for30" for easy future reference. After creating the attribute, I then place the overlay image for the specific attribute. We can then upload the products into a specific campaign along with the overlay attribute. This will then help customers know that these products are having a promotion where if you buy 3 selected items from Fox Accessories, you can get it for RM30. This was why I said earlier that without creating and placing these overlays, customers would not have a good user experience as they are not user-friendly because without these overlays, customers would not know which items are on promotion and which ones are not. I found that creating, placing, and removing overlays were quite easy, even though it was quite confusing at first. But since it does not involve many formulas in Excel, it made it easier for me to learn and understand.
Apart from learning on how to create, upload, and remove overlays, I also went for orientation for two days on the 24th and 25th of August. The first day of orientation took place at the office itself, all the newcomers met in our of the meeting rooms called Marie Claire. Maira, one of the human resource executive came in to welcome us and started off the orientation with an ice-breaking session where we introduced ourselves among each other. After we introduced ourselves, we play a game called "autograph bingo" and the objective of the game is to help us mingle and discover facts about each other. It is just like the normal bingo, but each player will obtain the signatures of people who have the facts listed on their bingo card. Once a player successfully obtains a full row (5 in a row) on his or her bingo sheet, whether obtained horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, he or she shouts “BINGO!” and will get a gift from Maira.
After that, Maira started introducing on how Zalora started and what they have become now. She also introduced us to the organisational structure and the practices of the human resource department. She then invited representatives from the other departments to briefly share on what they do; these include the buying, customer experience, marketplace, finance, marketing, IT, and production departments. There were some breaks given in between these sessions. We finished our first day of orientation earlier than expected at around 5pm as the managing directors were not free to talk about what they do and to welcome us to the company.
On the second day of orientation, I went straight to the warehouse located in Shah Alam. I met up with the rest of the new employees at the entrance of the warehouse before we were being shown around the warehouse by the warehouse manager, Mr. Ardian. The warehouse was divided into six different sections, which were inbound, inventory, outbound, delivery, returns and measurement, and quarantine. He started showing us and explaining on what each of the sections do. I had a really enjoyable time knowing how they process the orders of customers from the place of origin until the orders are successfully sent to the customers. We finished at around 12 noon and I went for lunch with the other new employees before heading back to the office to work. We were supposed to have the department orientation session, but since we already did it the first day, we did not have to do again the second day. My executive actually told me that I did not have to go for the orientation as she said it was boring, but I decided to go as I really want to take the opportunity to know more about the company, and I definitely did not regret it as I have learned so much about every aspect of the organisation and how orders were being processed. Not only that, but I also made a lot of friends by going to this orientation who I am still friends with until today.
5.4 Week 5- Week 6
On my fifth and sixth week of internship, I started focusing on doing product import. This is when I upload products into certain campaigns. Using the same example as the third and fourth week, I was given a SKU list for Fox Accessories from my executive to upload onto the website, along with the overlay. They selected some of the products from Fox Accessories that meets their requirement, such as their profit margins. In this case, they were selling these selected products in a way that if the customers buy more than one, they will get each item at a lesser price, which is the Buy 3 For RM30 promotion. This is to boost sales for these best-selling and most profitable items.
In order to upload these items into a campaign, I need to ensure that this sale has no clashing items with another sale within the same campaign. Zalora's back-end website, BOB, has five types of campaigns. Campaign one is the main type of campaign and it can have items that are clashing with another campaign in campaign one as you can upload the same item for two different sales. But for campaign two, three, four, and five, one item can only be in one campaign at the same time, which means if an item is in campaign two, it can only be in on sale under campaign two.
After checking which campaign is empty or has the least amount of clashing items, we then upload these items into that campaign. In this case, the Fox Accessories items have no clashing items in campaign three, which means that we can create the sale under campaign three. Before uploading, we must make sure that the attributes or name is created on BOB. I named this sale campaign "buy3for30" so that it is directly related to the sale. After the attribute has been created, I can now start formatting the Excel file according to the columns: sku_config, pet_approved, cmpgn_(number), overlay. Sku_config is basically the identity number of the specific item; each type of item will have their own sku_config. Pet_approved can either be 0 or 1, if it is 0, then the item is not approved to be on the website yet, thus we can only upload products with their pet_approve being 1. Cmpgn_(number) can be cmpgn_three if we want to upload these items into campaign three, under this column, we will then place the name of the campaign, which is "buy3for30" in this case. Lastly, the overlay can also be uploaded together by putting the name of the overlay which was created earlier under the overlay column. Usually, we will also input the formula "=MID(A2,6,2)" in order to find out which attribute that these items belongs in; it could be Apparels & Accessories, Accessories, Beauty, Sport Equipments, Shoes, etc. In this case, we already know that the brand Fox Accessories only sell accessories. This makes it easier for us to upload as we can skip the formula and upload straight onto BOB.
Once I have uploaded everything onto BOB, I will inform Li Qing that everything has been uploaded and give her the link of that specific campaign. The links for sales campaigns is in this format, www.zalora.com.my/all-products/?cmpgn_(number)=(campaign name), which means that this campaign link would be www.zalora.com.my/all-products/?cmpgn_three=buy3for30 . I will also inform her how many items should be in this link so that she can double check to see if it is correct or not. If the link total amount of products does not tally with the Excel file, then I would have to re-upload to make sure that every single product is being uploaded onto BOB. But in some cases, some products that did not get loaded onto the website might have a no visibility or is not active, and that will be why it does not appear on the website.
Other than doing product import, the highlights of these two weeks would be when Esther and I, and even Liyana who already left Zalora at that time, were invited by the head of our department, Kiki, to come and help the public relations team at the Topshop and Topman brand launching on Wednesday, the 9th of September, from 7-10pm in Bangsar. Honestly, I was so excited and grateful that Kiki wanted our help because it was one of the biggest event of the year for Zalora and I knew that I would not want to miss the chance as only invited guests are able to come and most of them were famous celebrities, models and fashion bloggers; one of them Amber Chia. According to Zalora, they spent around RM100,000 just for this three hours event.
On 9th September, we went straight to the event venue right after work as we did not want to be late. When we reached the venue, we did not really have much things to do as most of the areas that needed help were covered, so the three of us basically got free tickets as guests for this event that were full of famous celebrities, models and bloggers that I would not ever see in my whole life if I did not go to this event. We also got photographed by a lot of media coverage as they thought we were guests and "important" people within the Malaysian fashion industry.
I was planning to leave the event at around 9pm as I had to visit my uncle who was in the ICU at Gleneagles Hospital due to heart complications. When Esther and I wanted to leave, Esther started feeling dizzy and fainted at the back alley of the event. I panicked as there was nobody at the back alley of the place and Liyana had left earlier. I then rush to one of my friends to come with me to help Esther. We fanned her to cool her down and she was conscious a few minutes later, she then informed us that she took the alcohol drink and could not stand it. I told Esther I would not let her drive home alone, and told her that she was lucky that we did not leave earlier cause she might have fainted in the car if we did. So, she called her boyfriend to pick her up and I told my friend to stay with her until her boyfriend picked her up as I had to rush to the hospital. Even when all this happened, going to this event was basically one of the most interesting parts throughout my whole internship journey at Zalora.
5.5 Week 7 - Week 8
On the seventh and eighth week of internship, I was also focusing on product import, but instead of uploading them to a certain campaign, I learned to upload them to their categories instead, for example, uploading a Nike item to a Nike category. When uploading a certain item in a certain category, we use a unique number like ",5854", which will upload an item into the How Do I Look Episode 1: Rock Chic page. But it does not just stop here, I also have to VLOOKUP the "live categories" of these certain items that I want to upload onto HDILA Rock Chic page as Rock Chic is not the only category that has these items. For example, when we wanted to upload a top onto the Rock Chic page, we also have to check the category number for women's clothing > peplum tops, which is ",1779". This is why we have to check on "live categories" as it has the all the categories that a certain item is in. The format of this file would be: sku_config, pet_approved, categories, but to find the category numbers is the hardest part as it involves a lot of formulas.
Apart from that, week 8 was not a really great week for me as my uncle passed away on the morning of Hari Raya Haji. I had to take an Emergency Leave on the day before as he was getting worse and we were scared he was leaving anytime soon. It really affected my mood on going to work, and fortunately, I already requested for an annual leave for the second day of Hari Raya Haji a week before as my family wanted to go for a short vacation, but as humans, all we could do was to plan, but Allah SWT is the one that determines whether it will happen or not.
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5.6 Week 9 - Week 10
For week 9 and 10, I was introduced to Cart Price Rule (CPR). CPR is basically when we put a specific rule that will be applied when customers check-out their shopping cart. This could be in the form of 20% auto-deductions from your total cart price, or it could be in the form if you buy 3, the total would be RM30, just like the Fox Accessories example.
5.7 Week 11 - Week 12
The last two weeks of my internship was when I had myself familiarised with almost every single task I needed to do. I had become so good at doing anything that my supervisor told me she was really impressed on how fast I pick everything up as she does not see that often. I felt like I had achieved something very big and I was really proud of myself as whenever I was given a task to do, I will complete them right away without the need to ask anyone to help me. I feel quite sad that I was leaving soon as I have specialised in all the tasks I needed to do.
I still remember how I was struggling with doing my first task on my first day, but now, I almost know everything a campaign management intern needs to know. My executives always praise on how I am a good intern and was very impressive since my interview with her compared to some of the other students that were looking for internship opportunities. I felt a high level of job satisfaction. They have always motivated me to become better and for this, I felt like I had a belong to the company. This was also one of the reasons why I liked being involved in all the tasks I needed to do and wanted to do and complete my tasks without the need for help from anyone else as it was my responsibility.
Not only that, but my other executive, Rahman, was also very caring towards me as he also tries to ask me if everything is okay whenever I looked panicked or stressed at some point. This made me feel comfortable and calm as somebody actually cares if I felt stressed. Overall, I felt really connected and engaged with this company, even though I have only worked here for three months, but I honestly think I have learned a lot of things that I did not regret learning at all. I am so grateful to have been selected by Zalora to be one of their interns because I still remember that the human resource executive told us twenty selected new employees that we were chosen out of 5 other people as there were a total of 100 applications that were seeking us 20 new employees' positions. I really hope that I will somehow be able to work with the type of organisation in the future, if possible at Zalora too as I really love working there.
5.8 Last Day Of Internship (Off-boarding Process)
My last day of internship would be on this coming Friday, the 30th of October. Before leaving the organisation, I will need to go through an off-boarding process where I will need to submit anything that belongs to the organisation that were given to me on my first day of work, including a laptop bag, a laptop, a mouse, and etc. I would also need to complete some documents like the exit checklist to make sure that I am not bringing anything that belongs to the company with me, and the exit interview form where the human resource department wants to know the reason on why I am leaving.
