First Day

I didn’t really know what to expect for my first day at Go Communications in Kuala Lumpur. Obviously interning is a daunting experience on its own, adding a foreign country to the equation only escalated things. The previous students who had interned with Go Communications had pre warned me about the traffic or “Jam” as they refer to it in Malaysia. I was lucky to be able to hail a taxi easily enough from where I was staying in Bukit Bintang, a suburb located in the city precinct of Kuala Lumpur (similar to North Bridge).

Successfully managing my first task of finding a taxi and correctly navigating my way to the office, I arrived early to Go Communications. I had also been informed before commencing that the office equipment wasn’t the most recent and up to date, which I also discovered extended to the general office décor. I didn’t really appreciate these comments until I actually saw the office and I was quite shocked by just how old the equipment and décor was. I had completed previous internships, one of which was with a government office and they had in place the most up to date software and equipment to make sure work was completed to the highest standard possible. Go Communications office was a cultural eye opener.

The Go Communications head office in which I interned was founded by CEO Michael De Kretser, in 2006. Michael is an ‘out of the box’ thinker and “one of the most recognised, experienced and respected public relations professionals in Asia”.  Go Communications has expanded to have offices in Thailand, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Indonesia.

After a brief introduction to the various staff members, who were divided up into various teams, I was placed in the Vertical Team. The staff members in this team were all fairly new to Go Communications and had come over together from another company. My first task as an intern was media monitoring. Media monitoring is a task I had completed before, but not to the same degree that it is completed at Go Communications. The majority of staff are involved in this task. Go Communications staff collect clippings for a range of circumstances, which relate to each particular client - these include press, competition and industry. The scope of articles collected on behalf of clients I initially found to be excessive and extremely time consuming. Being a consultancy each of the teams has a large list of clients. Relative to the client’s size and influence, so the quantity of clippings the consultancy is required to collect for them, sometimes before 12 noon. The media monitoring process is laborious, and as such on occasions could be quite stressful, particularly to complete the task by the allocated deadline.

My first few days Go Communications were completely different to what I had expected, but were also a massive learning opportunity. Interning in a foreign country also allowed me the opportunity to immerse myself in Malaysia’s diverse range of cultures, which before commencing my trip, I knew little about.