On September 11, 2019, the International Affairs Office of the College of Management organized the “Internship Sharing Session”. After the opening remarks given by Associate Professor Shao Jung Wang, Director of the International Business MBA program (IBMBA), seven students from the College share their internship experience. 

 

Thai student Jetsin Patipatthanan from IBMBA was an engineer before he moved to Taiwan to study and then interned at a Taiwanese company. He came across Whetron Electronics Co., Ltd. at the job fair organized by National Sun Yat-sen Univerisity (NSYSU) and then went through interview at their Taipei and Thai offices. He shared the situations he encountered during the interview and hoped his experience could serve as a reference for other students. "It has not been difficult for me to live in Taiwan, but the cultural impact I experienced at Taiwan's workplace was not minor," he said. Taiwanese people's contribution to the organization and civic behavior, compared with Thai people’s relaxed state of mind and their punctual "escape" from the office, are rather new to him. As a result, he encouraged foreign students to learn more about Taiwan's professional work environment through participating in internships in Taiwan. 

 

Pei-yu Hung, a 2016 alumna who just graduated from Global Human Resource Management English MBA Program (GHRM MBA), interned at the German medical device manufacturer, MT.DERM GmbH. She shared with the participants the realities and difficulties of internships in Europe. She analyzed the overall internship experience from the perspectives of work culture, management method, and communication model. "During the internship, there may be situations where you are not familiar with, but utilizing of the nature of a student and from the perspective of learning, there will be different levels of understanding of the local organization culture," she shared. During the eight-month internship, she had not only helped the company plan a series of online marketing strategies for the East Asia and Southeast Asia markets, but also helped the company set up a new website for the brand. On top of that, she had also helped plan factory opening days and co-organized exhibitions in London, Berlin, and Barcelona. These experiences also helped her learn B2B business and marketing strategies. 

 

Xin Liu, a second-year GHRM MBA student, interned at Yulon Motor Co., Ltd. and worked as a recruiting intern in the human resources department. In addition to assisting the company in identifying talents suitable for the company in the job fair, she also got to work with the company's welfare department, learning how big corporations “retain talents”. Comparing to the internship experience of the students in the traditional industry, Yu-hsuan Hsu from Department of Business Management chose to intern at a startup in Taipei, NinetyRoad Travel. “A startup company is rather small, but it is also provides an excellent learning environment,” she said. Another student who is also from the Department of BM, Chih-Lin Tsai interned at iQiyi Beijing Office because of her love for watching drama, which is why she chose to work as a market analyst in this emerging market of video streaming and simultaneously experience the Chinese workplace culture. 

 

Another Department of BM student Meng-jia Liu, interned at the Business Planning Department at ACER that plans and manages the matters concerning the Asia markets. " I want to enrich my resume before graduation," she said. In addition, the company also organized workplace training courses and CEO proposal activities for interns to stimulate employees' creative proposals. Referring to the difference between internships in the industry and at school, Liu commented, "In the practical world, I got to learn practical skills such as Google Analytics, Excel Pivot Table Report and so on, which are not in learned at school, and the way of learning is also vastly different. This opportunity to learn as I do has enriched me”. 

 

Finally, Hkawn San, a GHRM MBA student from Myanmar, shared her summer course experience at Arnhem Business School, HAN University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. In addition to the regular class, the school also arranged a personal career advisor for students, which allows students to better understand themselves and plan the future in an organized way.

 

"People may think that the school is an umbrella carefully sheltering the students. But because of that, students can try their way to explore outside the umbrella and their future," commented Pei-yu Hung. She added that internship does not show the whole picture of a workplace, but can become an important part of the career planning, while adding a unique mark in the graduate life.