What are the most important skills (business/technical) and people that you have discovered in your internship? Is there a skill that you didn’t have before but realize that you absolutely need? Is there a person that you discovered that you definitely want on your side (besides your boss of course)?
Hung Dau says
One of the most important skills that I have learned during the internship is to report efficiently to Excel. Although I had taken the Excel class at Temple, I did not have experience using Excel for efficient reporting in the real world. Working with Fox Run Brands, I have to report thousands of products on Amazon to Excel to keep track of the growth weekly. That was hectic and confusing at the first time. However, I got used to it and my Excel skills improved a lot.
Rebecca M Robinson says
I agree with Hung when he said Excel is an important skill to have. Excel is a tool my team uses constantly and the Temple excel course did prepare me, but just practicing in it has helped me improve tremendously. Also, my note taking skills have improved. I am constantly jotting things down in my notebook so I can refer back to them. This is important so I am not asking the same things over and over. The one person on my team started out as an intern just like me, so it has helped having her there because she has experienced what I am going through and can help answer any questions I have on how to succeed in this internship.
Chi M Pham says
Excel is the most crucial skill in business. In my internship, I use excel to do some simple analysis and data cleaning for thousands of transactions. Without Excel, these processes would take a lot of time and effort.
Luckily, MIS and Fox courses prepare me well to do this internship, so I have a lot of knowledge in hand to do my job. However, one skill I want to work on is communication in project management. The internship focuses on manage launch campaigns, and we are almost always on a tight schedule. I took MIS 3535 and gained some experience with project managing, but I still have to practice and learn more techniques to effectively communicate with others.
I haven’t found a person that I definitely want on my site yet. Upper management like VPs and the C-suite would be nice.
Linh H Dang says
I am not using a lot of Excel right now, but I definitely agree that it’s a crucial one to be proficient at.
In my position right now, the most important skill to have is asking for work. As an intern in a large company, your manager may not know what to give you or how you can fit into the team yet, so they might not trust you with much work. However, big and intimidating assignments are necessary for growth. So recently, I have been practicing approaching my manager, my colleagues, and higher-ups to explain what I am willing to learn and what I want to help with. When talking to the next person, it’s good to use your previous work as a pivot.
My goal as a moment is to find the person in my team with deep involvement in Marketing tech and a way to weave my role as a Strategist into the project he/she is working on. Our CEO and executives are very open, so I aim to gain the attention of at least one by mid-July.
Ngoc Nathan Pham says
SKILLS:
– Technical:
+ Using Excel, especially leveraging different functions to increase efficiency in filling out data and sorting data. An example is that I have to evaluate the competency of a client’s employees to see if they can operate applications effectively. I learned to use different calculating functions and concatenate to quickly see how many years a person had worked for the client.
+ Swimlane diagrams help me a lot in my internship because we draw diagrams to understand our clients’ business and IT processes.
+ The understanding of different parts of an Enterprise IT system: we work with large infrastructure and perform risk assessments with multiple applications. Different MIS classes really provide me with a great foundation of knowledge to not feel too overwhelmed and know where to start
– Soft skills: teamwork, people skills, being likable, and active listening are all great skills that I find helpful over the first 3 weeks of my internship.
PEOPLE: really getting to know my peers and other people who started a few years before me is important. Because they will be the support network to grow with my career if I stay with the firm.
Ricardo S Mendez says
One of the most important skills I have learned is how to be an effective communicator through text. In my previous jobs, my co-workers were in the same location as I was so If I had an issue it was easy to talk to them face to face. With consulting, my team can be in a few locations at once and text communication is the only way so I needed/need to make sure I am being effective and efficient with my words. For important people, I have yet to discover one sole person I want to be on my side. I definitely am striving to be an effective team member and ensuring that my co-workers are seeing me as a great asset so I am trying to keep them on my side.
Nicholas Schratz says
I noticed a lot of people have been pointing out the importance of Excel in the workplace, but so far in my internship I haven’t really had to use it. I am sure in the future I will have my fair share of struggles with excel, and fortunately EY offers Excel classes for Interns that I hope to take part in so I am capable of meeting expectations. However, for now I need to agree with Ricardo, communication is such a critical skill to have. In my first few weeks most of my team has been out of the office on other engagements so I had to keep in touch with them through e-mail, skype, and instant messenger to keep in contact. With people being off the at other locations you never know when they will be able to get back to you, so it is important to be effective in communication and clear. Also, I learned it’s important to communicate your issues/questions in more of a list fashion so that instead of having to constantly interrupt someone from their work you can just set a block minutes to quickly go through a few things.
Han Bao Le says
Before my internship, I didn’t pay too much attention to email and I try to keep them as short as possible, sometimes to the point of sounding a bit blunt. When I started working, I discovered that email communication is very important because the majority of communication is done via email. My colleagues’ emails are not only short but also professional and warm, conveying not only the content but also the emotions.
A person who I want on my side is a coworker of mine who is a Temple MIS alum who sits in the desk nearby mine. He is politically savvy and he’s good at talking to people and networking, and I think his advice would be very valuable to me when I’m learning to navigate this environment.
Prince Patel says
I discovered that my role requires many soft skills like time management, people skills, interpreting instructions effectively are equally as important as hard technical skills taught at school. I met my colleague that interned with my role last summer. He is very resourceful since he had my role in the past and answers all the questions i have. He also provides guidance with I face challenges while working on my projects.
Anastasia Postolati says
One of the most important technical skills in my job are probably Excel, Outlook, and proper email correspondence. All reports that are done here at QVC require Excel knowledge and it is something I found very useful knowing. Outlook is also crucial since all the communication, meeting set-up, and task assignment occur through this software. With that comes a proper way to write emails, respond to emails, and so on. People expect you to be short, to the point, and communicate in a timely manner.
Something crucial I realized having is people skills. Everyone around you expect you to smile, communicate clearly, and overall maintain a healthy team-working environment. I learned the important of always asking questions and taking an extra minute to walk over to my team’s desks to ask about their weekend.
During my internship I discovered that it is important to be acquainted with others who work in my department as well as other departments. Through the QVC shadowing program I was able to meet many people who work with my team and it made it a lot easier to communicate! I now also am familiar with how the company operates from Ecommerce to Buying & Planning to On-Air Team.
Megan Rolfes says
As others have noted, I have found that understanding how to effectively communicate in the workplace has been one of the most important skills for my internship so far. My role work keeps me busy, but when I get stuck on something, figuring out what the right questions are to ask has been extremely important in my internship. Furthermore, as project manager for one of the intern summer project teams, I am constantly communicating with my team and facilitating meetings with various stakeholders, so I have been working to understand everyone’s communication styles.
Besides my manager, there are many people I have met that I would want on my side. My internship is part of a development program (TECDP), so there is actually an office of people devoting time to managing and working with TECDP interns. They are heavily involved in coordinating and helping with the summer project, and over the past few weeks, I have learned that they are great people to know. Many of them were interns in past summers and know what it takes to be successful not only on the project but also over the course of the entire summer. They have great advice to give in regard to leading a team, which I especially appreciate as a first-time project manager, and are always making themselves available as resources to us. It’s nice to know that there are people rooting for us to be successful both on the project and in our role work.
Eli Avraham says
So far in my internship I’ve discovered that group communication is a very important skill. Communication is key to get things done right and in a timely manner, rather then just giving us tasks my manager actually explains to me why I’m doing the task and how it contributes to the companies success. I found that useful because it gives you a sense a purpose and teaches you the companies procedures rather then just aimlessly following tasks. A skill I didn’t have with was experience managing a database like footprints, so far in my internship I’ve managed to improve my skills in excel and footprints to help input information and monitor trends in the company. Personally there isn’t one particular person I’d like to have my side, I’d rather be friendly with everyone because you never know when you’re going to need someone.
Chung-Han Tu says
Based on my experience, although having a strong technical skills is important. However, there are some soft skills or career skills that will definitely help me in the long run.
First, the mentality you bring to the team and the company. By having a mentality that you wish the approaches/suggestions will help the users regarding resolving their problems in the long run. Sometimes some approaches could fix user’s issues in a short span; however, by gradually fostering myself for having the mentality of resolving the issue in the long run, it will benefit the department in the long-run.
Second, by asking the right questions. With numerous projects ahead of me, there will be problems or questions that I simply have no answer to. By asking critical questions to the team or during the discussion, sometimes I can be more efficient in finding the solutions; moreover, bring a new perspective to the team during the discussion.