As defined in the Oxford dictionary, internship is the position of a student or trainee who works in an organization, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification. This definition is proven to be correct by one of our GHRM MBA students, Zhanna Samodurova from Russia as she shares to us her internship experience.

Zhanna is currently doing her internship at Envoy Enterprise Co. Ltd., a company that supplies foundry raw materials in Taiwan. She started her internship last February 2020 as a marketing researcher. Through Professor David Lin, also a consulting adviser of the said company, Zhanna was able to know the company. Her background in Materials Science Engineering and MBA makes her suitable for the job. This makes her application as Envoy's intern processed smoothly.

On being an intern

Her primary task as an intern is to do a research about Eastern Europe, focusing on countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland. Being more specific, she is tasked to research on different companies' market share, competitors, the level of GDP on each country, as well as on how to enter the market in Eastern Europe. Zhanna is responsible on knowing these pieces of information for Envoy. Her outputs will help the company arrange possible negotiations with business partners in these countries. The negotiations will then help Envoy to provide products to their customers.

On working conditions and culture shocks

Knowing the relevance of her work makes Zhanna appreciate her internship so much. For her, it is important to understand why she is doing her job and how clear her roles are. According to Zhanna, the company provides everything that she needs for her job. This makes her willing to put 100% of her efforts. She told us that she enjoys her internship so much, and she has no doubts on saying yes if she'll be asked to work for the company as a full-time employee. I never felt lost during the process because Sarah, the Vice President, always helps me. If I have questions, I can come to her directly even she's quite busy, Zhanna mentioned.

When we asked Zhanna on culture shocks in working on a Taiwanese company, this is what she said: I didn't have any culture shocks despite of the fact that Envoy is a Taiwanese company. Since it [Envoy] is a global company and they operate all over the world, I don't feel any big difference. She also added that there are no language barriers since all of her co-workers can communicate with her easily. She also mentioned that she doesn't have any problems communicating with her boss.

On her motivation and advice to do internship

Zhanna answered simply when we asked her on what's her motivation on doing an internship: To put something on my resume, and to experience the big world. According to Zhanna, it is better to do internship, rather than not doing it at all. For Zhanna, the internship makes the students familiar with working conditions which will help them estimate and evaluate themselves as employees. Through her internship, she can actually see the bigger picture of what she wants to do in the future. According to her, The requirements from you, as an intern, are not very high. The pressure during internship is lower, compared to a full-time job. It's good for interns to feel how it [the internship] is going to be.

With Zhanna's story, the College of Management hopes that more students would be more interested in doing an internship to experience the real world!