zaiShanghai

   Looking for work expe­ri­ence in Shanghai? The right    intern­ship is out there… (Photo: Casey Kwon)

I'd never had an intern­ship before com­ing to Shanghai. Considering that I'm an NYU junior this may seem a lit­tle weird per­haps (and also some­what shame­ful), but it's true nonetheless. So, I was will­ing and a lit­tle excited, but also anx­ious, when I was set up with a local com­pany in Shanghai through my Internship Seminar, even though the ini­tial process was almost too easy and con­ve­nient.

As an under­grad­u­ate, after all, you hear a lot of ter­ri­ble sto­ries about intern­ships. Interns often suf­fer the grum­bling work (not nec­es­sar­ily mean­ing­ful work either) and get used for free labor in the work­place. But, as a resume-booster and some net­work­ing oppor­tu­nity, stu­dents feel obliged to undergo the treach­er­ous path of intern­ing.

What ended up hap­pen­ing for me, though, was the com­plete oppo­site of my expec­ta­tions, and in the best pos­si­ble way.

Working for a small Shanghai-based mar­ket­ing com­pany, the Bergstrom Group, I was able to get famil­iar with my col­leagues with­out any prob­lems. Communicating was com­fort­able within the first few weeks, since I talked one-on-one with each indi­vid­ual in the office. The work I did in the office and occa­sion­ally at home all ben­e­fited the com­pany in some direct way. In other words, I wasn’t doing unnec­es­sary and tedious work. I was a part of the com­pany, for how­ever few months.

As a result, I dis­cov­ered my inter­est in mar­ket­ing. I had always liked the con­cept and the­o­ret­i­cal ideas of the field, but never had expe­ri­ence or first-hand obser­va­tions of its inner work­ings. Between work­ing at a mar­ket­ing com­pany and tak­ing Intro to Marketing, I real­ized how enthu­si­as­tic I was about the pro­fes­sional field.

Because I have ben­e­fited from and enjoyed my intern­ship expe­ri­ence in Shanghai so much, I wanted to com­pile a short list of some tips for any­one else who wants to make the most of their intern­ship expe­ri­ence, not exclu­sively in Shanghai. Hope you find them use­ful!

Be open-minded. You’re inter­ested in the enter­tain­ment indus­try and have expe­ri­ence in it, but why not try some­thing more PR-focused? Every indus­try has ele­ments of oth­ers, and get­ting a taste of how other indus­tries use the same skills and con­cepts will help you dis­cover new things, and per­haps a new inter­est. While you may want to bump up your resume with finance intern­ships, diver­si­fy­ing your expe­ri­ence is like­wise cru­cial to pro­fes­sional growth.

Don’t be (too) ner­vous.You need some amount of assertive­ness in order to get the intern­ship you want and get what you want out of it. Don’t stand on the side­lines when you’re doing some­thing for your intern­ship that you don’t think is ben­e­fit­ing you or them. If you want to do some­thing else and have good rea­son for it, tell your super­vi­sor and they’re likely to under­stand. Even if they don’t switch your role, it never hurts to try. At least they will know that you aren’t afraid to speak up if something’s wrong.

Choose a small com­pany. You will gain deeper per­sonal rela­tion­ships with your co-workers, and you won’t feel uncom­fort­able in the work­ing envi­ron­ment if you have prob­lems with any­thing. Networking will also be eas­ier. This way, you won’t get lost in the mix as ‘just another intern.’ You’ll do work that counts toward some­thing for the com­pany.

Communicate. Know who is your super­vi­sor, who is your boss, who is your col­league, and who is your fel­low intern. And get to know everyone’s names! Don’t be afraid to ask who is who, because you want to make sure you report to the right per­son. If you’re work­ing in a multi-language envi­ron­ment, know it. If you know the other lan­guage, and if it is eas­ier for your col­leagues to use that lan­guage, be pre­pared to use it as your pri­mary com­mu­ni­cat­ing tool. If you don’t know the other lan­guage, make sure that they know that, too!

Understand your tasks. If you have any ques­tions, ask! If you’re sit­ting around unsure of what you’re really sup­posed to do, don’t waste time: ask your super­vi­sor! They will be thank­ful that you’re try­ing to do the best that you can instead of pro­duc­ing some­thing not at all what they wanted. Ask for exam­ples of sim­i­lar com­pleted tasks.

Be inde­pen­dent and mature. Yes, mak­ing sure you’re doing your task cor­rectly is impor­tant, but don’t bother your col­leagues too much. You’re still in a work­ing envi­ron­ment and a pro­fes­sional work­place, keep that in mind. Some work­ing envi­ron­ments will be more for­mal than oth­ers, so stay obser­vant to office eti­quette when start­ing your intern­ship, and abide by them. While a break is always nice every once in a while, be effi­cient and keep dead­lines in mind, espe­cially if they involve a greater part of the com­pany.

Keep in touch. Don’t get lost after your intern­ship is over. Never mind that you prob­a­bly will develop pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships with your col­leagues (hope­fully, any­way), you want to make sure you keep in con­tact with them in case some­thing comes up in the future. What might come up? Who knows, but be pre­pared for it.

Good luck!