Week 1 of marketing Internship @ NUSS.

After more than a month of sending out resumes, with my heart sinking each week since start of April, I’m finally employed by NUSS as their marketing intern for the summer. Guess the hard truth is that me results is beyond ideal to step into civil service boards even for internship, oh well, should I start to get worried about my career opportunity with HDB/URA then? Anyway few things learnt from application of internship the past one month:

1.       Never, never give up. Shall not get dishearten a year from now, or rather much earlier, when I send out resumes again for a real job and get no response. Just have to keep trying. After all, I only gotten this after sending out 40 over resumes at least?

2.       Everything is part of the experience, like how I brushed up on my CV and cover letter slowly as I apply to more places, help from friends and seniors, like ali who sent me her CV at the very begin, like Gin and XL looked through my CV, like how I chance upon a very useful NUS guidelines during one of my application to nestle. So yeah, guess nothing is ever wasted.

3.       Know what you want and don’t lose sight of it. Went for a Samsonite marketing intern interview before NUSS which offered  higher remunerations and more convenient location, but eventually turned down the offer because I figured that the long working hours will severely jeopardize my personal life and the job scope does not seem like I will learn much.

So that was some two penny worth of thoughts during the application period. It’s my fifth day here and I’m pretty much settling in to NUSS. It’s been an overwhelming week considering the only marketing guy in the department left the company on my second day of internship for a greener patch of land, and I was pretty much handling a large part of his work now, much of the things are ongoing so it took me a while to adapt and figure out the bigger picture. Which I thought such strategic position offers a double edge sword to my internship experience here. It’s good that I’m almost in complete control of the ongoing events and marketing plans, but on the down side I have no one to consult on or given instructions by. So pretty much on my own, thankfully for the past archieves and friendly colleagues in the same membership department, I am slowly grasping things here.

Few things I have learnt on a personal level during the short five days thus far is that:

1.       Got to form good habits like keeping things organized and plan ahead of time. Small little habits like documenting emails into labeled folders and doing planners are proven to be very useful, especially that I have been pretty much very careless and forgetful in everyday life.

2.       Always ask for help when stuck, things pretty much become easier when more information is given instead of trying to crack my brain out for a solution on my own.

So yeah, that so far sums my internship experience here. Am definitely glad that the position did not turn out to be some ad hoc and data entry or telemarketing hoax, feeling xiao empowered to be in charge of major events from head to tail. Wonder when is the full time replacement going to come in and do I then throw back everything to him/her? But the replacement is probably gonna be as rookie as me, or unless he/she is an experienced marketing executive in the field already.

Work hasn’t been hectic for me yet since I have the luxury to blog bout it here. A little concern if I am actually doing too little work this week upon seeing the in-house designer working full force everyday behind me. But to justify I am not getting his pay neither teheheh. Feeling kind of fortunate and people here are really friendly and helpful to me. In addition guess its also good to polish my socilalizing skills once in a while just as I was a little concerned with my lack of interactions with people from all walks of life recently after hiatus from Sheares a year ago. Shall take this opportunity to improve my interpersonal skills and may the next 2.5months give me a clear direction on what kind of career I want to achieve in life, or at the least, what do I not want.

Yay, ending off my post on a happy note that there is Staff bowling event later, though I’m feeling xiao bad that I flew Lnr’s areoplane for it when at the same time, he flew the areoplane on his friends for our supposed first Fridate after work. Oh speaking of which, I am still struggling to adapt to the new 8.30 -600 lifestyle, though in reality I have been reaching at 845-ish every morning. Opps. I guess weekend going to be really precious to me for the next 2.5 months at least and may I then cherish my last academic year more when the internship ends in Aug.   :)