Roll up your sleeves, reach the future: Internship Sharing Day

On the 11th of September 2019, the director of International Programs and International Relations Office(IRO), Dr. Sharon Wang, introduced several internship resources, including the EFMD Global Talent Portal and Global Internship Facilitation of Taiwan, and the free insurance provided by our university. The IRO invited seven students from the College of management to share their internship experiences and how they grew through immersing themselves in various company / organizational settings with the faculty and fellow students.

The seven students each put the theories they learned into practice, either in Taiwan or in other parts of the world.  Our IBMBA student from Thailand, Jetsin Patipatthanan, had previous work experience in engineering. After moving to Taiwan for his master studies, he decided to further explore the Taiwanese work culture by spending his summer in Whetron Electronics. His initial contact with the company started with the job fair in NSYSU and was followed by interviews with the Taipei Office and the Bangkok Office soon after the job fair; Jetsin went into the details about the interviews he had with both offices, hoping to better prepare his fellow students for their future interviews. “To a person from Thailand, daily life in Taiwan is not that big of a challenge, but I encountered some culture shock when dealing with the Taiwanese work culture.” He compared the Taiwanese attitude towards the organization and their organizational behavior with the more relaxed work setting in Thailand where he said people typically “run away” from work. This and other differences were interesting and fresh to Jetsin. He also encourages all the foreign students to explore the professional field in Taiwan through internships.

Peiyu, who recently graduated from GHRM MBA had her 8-month internship with MT.DERM GmbH, a medical device manufacturer located in Berlin, Germany. She first shared her experience with the difficulties of finding internships in Europe and followed with a thorough analysis of the experience with work culture, management methods and communication styles. “It is almost inevitable to not face hardships throughout your internships, but if you examine things with a mind of a student, you will most definitely learn something about the intricacies of the local organizational culture,” she said. During her time in Berlin, she not only helped plan a set of online marketing strategy targeting the east and south-east Asian market and built and launched a brand-new website, but also planned events such as factory tours and various other events. Such experience has rewarded her with knowledge in B2B operations and related marketing strategies.

GHRM MBA second-year student, Esther Lu did her internship in Yulong Motor as a recruitment intern. She put theories learned in classes into practice, helping the company find suitable candidates in job fairs. Esther also had a glimpse of how company welfare operates, in order to keep their talent pool in top shape.

While Peiyu and Esther gained experience in established companies, Alice Hsu, a second-year students in the Master Program of Business Administration, had a somewhat interesting experience with NinetyRoad Travel, which is a start-up travel agency. Start-ups can be smaller, but they are great for students to develop a well-rounded perspective of businesses, while practicing more horizontal communication.

Also from the same program, Lynn Tsai went to Bejing, China to work with iQIYI. Her love for drama TV series let her to work with a video-streaming company as a market analyst and to explore the professional culture in China.

From the Master Program of Business Administration, Eileen Lu spent her summer at ACER. She kindly shared info about the platforms with she used to hunt for her internship opportunity. “My undergraduate degree was in a completely opposite direction from business management, and that made me want to enrich my resume, for a smooth sail into the future,” she said. After successfully passing the resume screening and the interviews, she then entered ACER’s Business Planning Division, to learn about how the company manages their Asia market, the sub-markets and their daily practices. The company hosts CEO lectures and creative proposal events for the employees to exercise their creative minds. Speaking of the differences between the corporate world and the academic field, Eileen considers the experience in the real world an extremely valuable one. “Things such as Google Analytics and Excel PivotTable Reports are not taught in schools; this hands-on experience really helped me fulfill my goal of enriching myself.”

Lastly, GHRM MBA student Hwak Shan shared her exciting summer organized by Arnhem Business School in the Netherlands. Other than lectures and workshops, ABS also provided students life coaches to help them better understand themselves and their future in an organized manner.

People might consider schools and universities as umbrellas protecting students carefully, but with this umbrella, the students can then approach the outside world in their own way and explore the future in a safe controlled manner. Peiyu does not consider internships to represent the full scope of the real world, but they can become an important piece of one’s professional career, and also remarkable memory during one’s master studies.