First Internship in Life!

It is grateful that I have finally had my first working experience, a Public Relations internship, on the holiday of the 2010 semester break!

My internship is at a private medical organization named Bamboos located in my own country, Hong Kong. PR industry is not considered as a very important section in Hong Kong. There are little organization would have an individual PR department, but normally the large-scale companies. Marketing department would often replace PR's jobs in Hong Kong. 

Since it is hard to get a PR job in Hong Kong, I had sent out more than 100 application letters to get only four interview opportunities. Luckily, I have finally hired by Bamboos as a full day paid intern for a one-month period. I worked every day from Monday to Friday between 8.45am to 6.45pm, but it usually needed to work over-time. The working environment in Bamboos is at fast pace and stressful, but it did pursed for self-development and I have really gained some useful experience thought.

I consider Bamboos as an ethical company with strong social responsibility. They often conduct social activities for a better community relation. Moreover, before I entered Bamboos, it was already a well-known company in the medical industry of Hong Kong. However, it seldom has advertising. Meanwhile, my boss always reminds us brand image is based on the quality of services not mass of advertising. I definitely agree with his saying. With high quality, it creates word of mouth and lead to customers purchase automatically. It is the best way to promote the company name and its products in long-term.

Here is the Bamboos Offical Web Site (English Version). You may find further details and background of Bamboos if you are interested.

 

The first day work in Bamboos, I have already found that it is not an ordinary internship. Unlike the other short-term internships, there is no warming up period. I did not been asked to perform simple office works such as photocopying. It seems everyone expected you to have understood the job areas, therefore, no one would did much explaination to you unless you asked. In fact, at the first day of my work, I had already responsible for a PowerPoint draft of a client pitch. One of my colleagues gave me some basic information of Bamboos and documents of the client background for read thought it. Later on, my manager briefly told me about the content of the pitch they requested and asked me to work on it myself. 

I found it is a challenge for me, since I was new to Bamboos and did not understand the entire company as well as their working methods. Therefore, I felt confusing and nerve about the task area. However, when I started to work on it, it is actually similar to what I have learnt in the previous PR units. There are not many differences beside a faster speed of work needed. I have used less than two days to complete the whole draft of the pitch. It then used another day for modification thought the advices of my manager. 

At the end of the week, the client came to our office for the pitch and we had successfully obtain their agreement for future cooperation. My manager has told that I have done a good job. However, I feel happier to see I had contributed and did success in the little assistance.

It built my confident and cause further hard working in the fellow weeks!

 Additional Information: The overview of the client pitch PowerPoint