Tips for Interns Who Have Not Worked Before

© Corpcom Services Sdn. Bhd. 2009
Author: Chong Sheau Ching

The following are some tips for improvement, culled from past experiences with young pre-university or undergraduate interns:

You will be given a TOR (terms of reference) according to your skill levels, type of past office experiences, aptitude/interest, community experiences, and field of study. If we feel that you need basic admin skills training first, we will assign you to do some clerical tasks in the first month, and gradually increase your task complexity.

When you are given tasks to do by yourself, be diligent and do your very best. When your eH supervisor gives you feedback for improvement, take it as an empowerment exercise where someone willingly spends time to mentor you, do not take it as personal attack and dislike feedback for improvement. And do not quit just because you are being mentored to do things properly. Even if you make the same mistakes repeatedly, do not be frustrated. Examine yourself – Have you been paying attention? Are you treating this internship too lightly? Do you have enough sleep daily?

Internship is like participating in a Personality Development Program, interns should not treat the host non-profit organization with this: ‘I am doing it for you for free; I am the ‘giver’, ‘you’ are the beneficiary so you owe me this and that. You must pay for this and that.” This attitude is obnoxious and culturally offensive.

Don’t judge that your host organization is wrong and incapable and that you are right (because you come from a developed country) especially when you don’t have solid experiences in the field or a particular knowledge area (e.g. marketing of Fair Trade products).

Make sure you have adequate sleep. One of the biggest problems for young interns is that they spend long hours Skype-ing families and friends at night or updating their Facebook so much so that they are tired and cranky in the day time.

Just like any internship, you will be evaluated by eH according to several criterias. The most important criterias are: ability to learn and progress on skill sets; ability to complete tasks assigned in a timely manner; punctuality/time management, commitment/honesty; ability to problem solve on own and take initiative to recommend new solutions; ability to take on responsibility of activities on own or be the leader of a project.

Learn to read instructions on email carefully or listen to instruction/ mentoring with concentration, ask if you don’t understand, check your work diligently before you send to your supervisor for approval.

Concentrate in the office, do not let private affairs ( updating Facebook, watching YouTube videos, texting friends, skype chatting with friends, playing online games every time your supervisor is not in the room) interfere with your office time for this will greatly reduce your concentration to learn and perform well. And it shows that you do not have the commitment and interest to empower yourself with skill sets and knowledge for your own future.

If you are tasked with documentation or solving a particular problem, unless you are a subject expert with years' of experience, do collect your colleagues' input and listen to their descriptions of the situations and explanations about problems or hurdles, ask for their opinions on how to solve their problems before you decide that your advice is the best for them. Say something like this, " Here are the figures for the assignment you gave me. I used my own estimates and what I find out from the Internet. I will call this 'Set A'. Then I gathered other facts from XYZ in the office. So here are some new figures and justification for the changes. I will call this 'Set B'. I have created them supported by research and statistics. I look forward to your final decision on which set to use for the project.”

Always save your computer work and name the file properly for easy retrieval. If it is a document that may need several rounds of changes, name it to include ‘date of updating’ so that you don’t overwrite the new version with an old version due to carelessness.

Your work email (you may be tasked with an eHomemakers email address which is published online to receive forms or for email enquiries) may receive scams weekly. Some in the form of grants to eH, some in the form of donation to eH’s women, some offering volunteer service and services to help our members especially single moms. Be very vigilant. Do not click onto any of the link till you are sure.

Even some phone calls to office are masquerade as wanting to help eH poor members but in actual fact, they just want to get hold of our bank account number, passwords/usernames. Another common scam is one masquerading as link exchange or internet marketing or search engine optimization for websites -- a technique to divert traffic from high traffic sites to theirs. It comes from a computer that keeps spamming us from different email addresses, sometimes several times a day.

Also, never reply them or click a link to 'unsubscribe' because your email will be trapped by the software and more spam will come. Also, as a rule of thumb, do not click onto any PDF/link with words like ‘sex’, ‘make money’, ‘be a millionaire’, ‘naked pictures of movie stars’, ‘love’ or a hot international topic like 'tsunami that just occurred'.

When you go for site visits on behalf of eH, be careful of your laptop, passport(don’t put outside yr shirt pocket to show off your citizenship), handphone, money, and belongings. Please accept the advice, do not argue and attack the advisor. You are here to help the disadvantaged, not to add strains to eH staff at police stations, hospitals or court because of your carelessness and refusals to take safety advise.

Treat security of database and eH’s cloud application, ECHO, seriously, do not give out passwords and relevant information without approval.

Research through Google if you don’t know something, have a problem solving attitude. E.g. how do I do Google doc?

If you have never worked in an office before, working with hundreds of email ( direct or cc to you), skype, skype chat, and documentation can be daunting. Organize your email into proper folders, with some marked as ‘pending’, ‘urgent’, etc. Tag with colored flags for your own follow-ups.

When you give suggestions, justify them with facts you gather from concrete research. Use statistics, summaries in excel sheets or tables to justify. Do not simply plug things from the thin air just for fun. Do note that the final decisions to use your suggestions or not rest in eH management’s hands, not you.

Discuss with your supervisor what is needed before you create something that will remain unused in the future. Keep your supervisor informed of your work with discussions.

If you are charged with documentation or solving a particular problem, unless you are a subject expert with years of experience, do collect your colleagues’ input, listen to their descriptions of the situations and explanations about problems or hurdles, ask for their opinions on how to solve their problems before you decide that your advice is the best for them. Say something like this, “You have provided me with different facts which change the figures I was working on, so I am now providing you with new statistics and justification for the changes. I believe I have done that as long as I have been here. I don't think I have created any work for you thus far that has not be supported by research or statistics of some sort. I look for your final decision.”

Special care to clothing: No shorts, low cuts, miniskirts or transparent blouses for women. Jeans and t-shirts are OK as long as there are no visitors coming to the office that day.

Office time, be serious : Do not chit chat too much and waste time away. Constantly Skype chatting with friends, texting on handphone with friends, updating social media, taking photos of oneself for updating to social media, and watching YouTube videos for entertainment.

If you want some background music because you are working on a repetitive task such as painting baskets, use headphone but do not turn it too loud that others in the office room can hear you.

Eating/drinking something sweet: Do not eat in the admin room, or at the computer, food scrapes on the keyboard will attract rodents to the admin room. If you drink very sweet drinks, be sure to take your cups and glasses away from the room when you leave.

Clean and tidy your desk or work space every day when you leave the office. Help out to tidy or clean the office and not behave as if you are a rich kid who can’t even wash his/her own cup.

 Reimbursements: If you have to make calls and the office agrees to reimburse you, .get a RM5 local i-talk card to call KL, but buy in-country i-talk card to call locally- RM5/week is the max. Keep all receipts for reimbursements if there is an agreement. Do not treat people you meet with foods and drinks without prior agreement with eH. Depending on your agreement with eH, keep your travelling receipts for reimbursements. Failure to provide original receipts will mean eH cannot reimburse you due to lack of proof of expenses spent.

For Unpaid Interns: Refrain from nurturing the attitude of “I am doing free work for you so you have to listen to me.” You are here to learn and gain experience for your resume, no one owes you anything for being here.

Foreign interns --Your professional behaviours and dedication to your internship will determine how much hospitality will be extended to you. If you work on your internship diligently and treat everyone with respect, your unpaid internship will become ‘paid’ as your hosts will willingly pay for your expenses because they appreciate your dedication. If they are hospitable to you at the beginning and then begin to withdraw their hospitality and invitations, then you should examine yourself first before blaming Malaysians for being ‘cold’ and unfriendly.

All interns -- The first question to ask yourself – have I been doing my work, following office procedures and in general, a pleasant and cooperative person to be with?

Don’t offend your office colleagues with inappropriate behaviours and comments especially the ‘f’ word.