Within the past year, I have had two opportunities to work in a professional setting as part of two different companies. My experiences - involving two different career options - has been valuable in allowing me to examine viable options for my future career and understanding a work environment. My first internship involved the preparation and participation of a trade show that took part in the outskirts of Bangkok, at Muang Thong Thani. My ‘job’ consisted of an involvement of 2 weeks, where the first week was inclusive of preparation and planning and the following week was the actual trade show. During this time, I was held accountable of ‘marketing’ as part of M.C.L.P CO., LTD. With reference to its website, MCLP is a well-established company in central Bangkok, providing reliable, high-quality protective apparels and equipment for the law-enforcement unit, camping gadgets & gears for outdoor, uniform accessories & raw materials for officers, shooting safety glasses & protective hearing muff for the military & police to the South-East Asian market.
The trade show, called ‘Defense and Security 2017’ is a Conference and Networking Event. It provides a special window of opportunity for international manufacturers as well as ASEAN defense and the internal security procurement market. This work experience opportunity has not only helped me to understand the amount of hard work required but allowed me to get an overarching perspective of a business in a specific sector, even more so when experiencing it in a trade show that is meant to capture the essence of the business itself. During my time, I learned to appreciate the importance of every small role in a business. I began the internship with a mindset of making no impact and only joining in for the sake of experience, however, after working on the requirements above I noticed that my actions had impacts on the trade show - despite how small the actions may have been. I Initially underestimated the amount of time and effort that each role takes. In addition to working for 8 hours, I found myself coming home to continue working on aspects that I could not finish, inclusive of the video edited. And despite the perseverance developed, upon reflecting on my experience, my constant ‘busyness’ actually resulted in me losing track of time and I eventually found that I seriously enjoyed what I was doing. So much so, that on the third day of the trade show, I decided to opt out of lunch due to an increased amount of individuals visiting the booth.
In other words, I was required to do the following:
Gain an understanding of all the products being showcased in regards to its functionality/specifications
Be ready to show/test all products upon being asked to
Preparing thorough explanations for all possible questions that could be asked or explanations required (in both English and Thai)
Creating one edited video promoting various products that were showcased. This required combining previously made videos, images, and audio into one video that would have been played on repeat on one of the TVs in the trade show booth.
Assisting with the setup of the booth including placement of products and showcasing.
Although this is only one aspect of the companies work, I found that I highly enjoyed observing the interactions between the high ranked militaries and officials with the business personnel in M.C.L.P’s booth and all other companies. It was very interesting to see their communication as they swapped their contact cards and exchanged information in hopes to have ‘business’ with one another. Overall, the interconnected attributes of the tradeshow allowed me to grasp and essence of ‘business’ in a very specific sector and has facilitated my passion in considering it to be a viable option in my future career.
The following letter provides evidence of my involvement
Later in the year, I was given another opportunity to emerge myself in another ‘career’ as part of the NIST work experience week that I took part in towards the end of Year 11. After choosing from a list of options and learning valuable techniques in creating a resume, I was placed to work in Allianz Technology for the following week alongside with three of my peers.
Allianz Technology is the internal shared services provider for Allianz Group. Which invisions to transform Allianz into a digital group. They claim to be the key driver of the global digital transformation within the whole Allianz Group, work in a dynamic, friendly, innovative and international working environment, develop businesses career as an expert and be a project manager or in a leading position. It is a large multinational company that have 147,000 employees worldwide.
After being introduced to the company, it is hard to see past how individuals can have such a pivotal role in an organization this big. However, after paying close attention to their division of work into an extensive variety of specific departments, it is easy to understand where their succession comes from. At the beginning of each day, week and month they hold both formal and informal meetings to discuss their progress, goals and concerns, this is done in the Bangkok headquarters as well as through video conferencing with other countries.
The following is a brief overview of my experiences:
Daily meetings at the start of the day/week to plan and evaluate work done in the previous week/day and the goals for the current day (learnt organizational techniques
Took part in video conference with other countries and understood the importance of teamwork in multi-national companies.
Was very fortunate to be able to take part in meeting with AI analyst from Germany, understood how the manager considers the perspective of each job to achieve a holistic understanding.
Through walking around the environment and listening to discussions while taking notes, understood how the organization work and the vital aspects of each job.
Generally, the working environment and the outline of my days were as follows:
Worked from 9:30 to 5:30 each day from Friday the 8th to Thursday the 14th of June 2018
Days are standard working hours, but are flexible.
Found it very interesting being in a work environment and experiencing a day job in technology
Different work environment to what I anticipated, very organized with white boards and diagrams all over, people being productive yet having the opportunity to relax through playing pool, table tennis, gaming tournaments that they host and weekly gatherings with free food.
Interesting to see how a large organization can combine the works of each person and how each person and job is essential to succeed and how everyone has their own role within each department.
