My first steps into the professional world with CareerContact
I was able to take part in a month-long summer internship at CareerContact to experience working in a professional environment. Here’s what I learned!
I took part in a month-long internship at CareerContact through my school’s Summer Internship program. This was my first experience working in a professional environment outside of the school setting, and it turned out to be a priceless learning experience. I was able to get my feet wet in a startup environment, gaining great exposure to the inner workings of a startup. Here I want to reflect on some of the skills I have acquired over the last month.
1. Norms of professional marketing and public interaction
My main project throughout the internship was to host a 2 hour-long webinar about a career path of my choosing. With the help of some of my co-workers, I contacted speakers, made promotional material, and set up an event. Ensuring that it appealed to both the audience and speakers was the first and possibly most important step to a successful webinar.
I started off by searching for and contacting speakers via LinkedIn. This was a new social media platform for me and I also had to present myself as an employee of a company instead of a student. I was able to learn a great deal about the power of LinkedIn and how helpful it can be to advertise oneself to appeal to the desired audience of pre-university students. A graphical presentation of information would be able to capture the attention of the audience and convey the message concisely.
Next, I started producing promotional material like posters and social media posts. To appeal to the general public, I made a poster on Canva giving information about the event and directions of registration. Afterwards, this poster was posted on all of CareerContact’s social media platforms. Nowadays, we are all exposed to a wide range of advertising. Through this experience, I was able to see the reasons why marketing is done the way it is. For example, my poster was posted on different social media handles to attract different audiences. I also got to appreciate the attention to detail that goes into marketing. Often in the emails that I sent, there were a few tiny details like image and line spacing that I’d often neglect. I learned to make sure I look for those
2. Taking initiative in a professional environment
In a school environment, one doesn’t always get to truly experience the world for exactly how it will be. Personally, I am a person who sees tasks — in school or not — as opportunities to build on my skills. During my internship at CareerContact, I got to work with and immerse myself in a professional environment quite deeply. One of my greatest takeaways from this experience is the significance of taking initiative within a group. In school, ample guidance is given to students to complete a task. In this environment, although most of these are still done, one needs to take the initiative to ask for help or find out when certain tasks should be completed because there is never anyone there to chase you down.
At the beginning of the internship, I was quite set on trying to be included in different teams in order to develop various skills. I checked in regularly with my co-workers to see where I could add value. However, towards the end of the internship, particularly after I got quite deeply into the event planning process, I started to focus more on my own work and depended more on the help I received from my mentor for deadlines and proofreading. I realized that in a real professional setting I won’t always be able to rely on my co-workers to set me deadlines like in school.
Through the experience, I also realized the importance of clarifying any misconceptions I have about my expectations working as an intern. For example, as I was interning for quite a short period of time, much of the prepared workflow had to be tweaked as I went along which caused uncertainty about what plan I should follow. This caused a few issues in communication between my co-workers and me which led to a low webinar attendance. I can definitely take this as a learning opportunity and be more proactive to clarify my doubts in the future especially when I’m working in a small, close-knit group like at CareerContact. I could also go in with a prepared plan of my own and get it confirmed to eliminate any misunderstandings along the way.
3. Presentation and communication skills
Going into the webinar, my major concern was around my presentation skills, especially as I was talking to professionals in a field that I am not very familiar with. My post-webinar feedback was quite positive indicating that I was able to successfully carry out the webinar in spite of the unfamiliarity and time constraints. I also believe that I was able to deliver my ideas and questions effectively in order to aid the audience’s understanding.
However, to complement my presentation, my communication skills lacked in different areas. This was something I was already aware of to some extent. For instance, throughout the webinar, when summarizing discussions, I was long-winded and inconcise. This was also a persistent issue in most of my interactions with co-workers. One of the projects I received was around comparing the user experience of the CareerContact App and with two other similar platforms. , when it came to presenting my findings, I found that I fell short of communicating in an accurate way.
4. Consumer UX design
My first experience in analyzing UX was through comparing the CareerContact app with two other similar platforms. I was able to see why certain companies made the choices reflected in their design. For example, one of the platforms we looked at very prominently publicised its use of AI analytics, which I recommended as a possible consideration for the CareerContact app. However, upon further feedback, I realized that AI technology is not always accurate and therefore may not be the right fit for us now. Possibly that firm chose to do that to increase its perceived value as AI is a ‘cool’ and cutting-edge technology.
I also attended a talk by one of the founders of CareerContact on the topic of UX design research. I learned what goes on behind the scenes in leading firms when designing a website. Many things like font style, size, and colours are all carefully chosen with their intended audience in mind. It will be something I take into account when designing UX in the future, and can also be a reminder to always consider the finer details in any task.
By the end of the experience, I gained key insight into how a professional environment functions. In the future, whether it will be internships in university or building other professional relationships, I will draw on my experiences from CareerContact. Through the webinar that I conducted I also gained insight into the field of emerging technologies. It played a role in helping me solidify my interest in further education because I got to see how very interested I am in this field. I hope to work on my areas for improvement in future experiences but, I can undoubtedly say that CareerContact was a great stepping stone into my future.
CareerContact is an ed-tech platform designed to bridge the gap between school and work. We help students develop digital skills and connect them with SMEs in Southeast Asia. Whether you’re a student, educator or enterprise, feel free to reach out to us at info@careercontact.org or CareerContact.app.
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