Work Shadowing: From high school student to intern
I’ve always thought about what I can do to improve myself. After a week-long internship in CareerContact, I’ve formed new perspectives and goals for applying to future work experiences.
by Steven Yu
CareerContact offered work shadowing opportunities to students from United World College at the request of the schools’ college counsellors. Over the course of three weeks, students were exposed to agile methodologies, product meetings and participated in our UX-marketing digital skills programme conducted with our first Thai partner school, Anglo-Singapore International School.
I was first introduced to CareerContact through a school event and was interested in their work helping high school students develop digital skills by connecting them with SMEs and other excellent educators. I’d been curious about social entrepreneurship lately, so I applied through our school’s internship coordinator. I aimed to gain both the knowledge and experience of how social entrepreneurship works. Moreover, I expected to work more effectively and professionally after the week was through.
The experience was great but packed. We were given a load of work that was nothing like what we’d done in school. However, I loved it because it was challenging and tightly packed. It helped me realize how my productivity and work efficiency could be improved. This short five-day experience was a great opportunity for me to push myself hard and do great work, contributing to the company I would be interning at.
Day 1
We were given a very clear introduction from Monica Chan, our supervisor, on how CareerContact works and how the week’s schedule was planned. We were introduced to the project of focus — creating a new Facebook chat to allow students, educators, and SMEs to interact with each other. We drafted out an email that would be sent to teachers in UWCE to share their perspectives on the project. At night, we attended two internal meetings in CareerContact, which I think would be best to be reflected on. One was the business development meeting and the other was the team meeting. Both meetings were conducted at a very fast pace, and productively. I wished that I understood the jargon they used. It made me think of my presentation skills and how to put ideas onto the table in a concise and useful manner.
Day 2
We had CareerChat meetings with two experts from different companies. The first meeting was with Larissa Ong, a Documentary Producer at Channel NewsAsia. Producers never view their work in terms of difficulty as they put equally huge amounts of effort into every project.
The second CareerChat meeting was with Brian Liu, the Senior Vice President at Lazada, on the topic of E-commerce. This was the meeting I needed to scribe for and write a feature article about. From this session, I learned the advantages and disadvantages of working as a consultant, and thought I’d better start planning my career now. Moreover, he described the importance of finding one’s passion and being curious about it — always a bonus.
Later in the afternoon, we had an interview with Mr Kelly, our English teacher, who spoke about his perspectives on internship opportunities on social media. The discussion was fruitful, but we weren’t sufficiently prepared so we didn’t perform well. Since we would have another interview on Day 3, we reflected on our mistakes and feedback given by Monica. To ensure the next interview was more successful, we added more reflective questions and planned out roles for each of us.
Day 3
We attended an online course conducted by CareerContact with an international school in Thailand. We joined as interns, but we, like those Thai students, were actually there to learn about digital marketing.
In addition to the content of the course, I paid attention to the organizer, how he ran the meetings and how he transitioned from one activity to the next. Overall, we covered the importance of UX, the persona, and the stages of designing.
After that session, we had an interview with Mr Soh, an instructor in CareerContact as well as a history teacher in a middle school in Singapore. From the interview, I obtained insights from Mr Soh which was helpful to our presentation.
We went on to carry out secondary research, with the knowledge that Facebook is used by youth from many Southeast Asian countries. Our visiting teacher, Mrs Wiseman, also turned up for a check-in session. At the end of the day, we reflected on our progress thus far and set goals for the rest of the session. I aimed to focus on creating the presentation.
Day 4
We took part in the second session with the Thai students and were introduced to a lot of new business concepts, such as B2B, B2C, marketing funnel, and 4ps of marketing. I began to notice the phenomenon Mr Soh spoke about on the issue of online teaching and learning. I understood how teachers felt about inactive performance during the online courses. Therefore, I was much more proactive in answering the class questions.
In the afternoon, we had a CareerChat Meeting with Jay Fong, the Product Manager at ByteDance / TikTok. We were introduced to how digital marketing combined with social media, and the importance of social media in the development of a company’s digital marketing.
Final Day
On our last day, we carried out our project presentation and received a lot of useful feedback from the CTO, supervisor, and other colleagues. In the future, I’d focus on the specificity of my presentations and ask myself how I’d make my presentation more concise. We ended with reflections through the 321 game: 3 things I found the most interesting, 2 things I wish I knew, and 1 thing will do in the future.
In conclusion, my first internship experience has been great in letting me know what stage I’m currently at, how I might reach certain skill sets, and what I can do to improve. What I learned here can be applied to IB and even further in the future. This experience has taken me out of my comfort zone, from a high school student to an intern, and has one hundred per cent been a positive and memorable experience for me.
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. Feel free to reach out to us at CareerContact.cc or check out our courses on Thinkific.
