As an undergraduate student in International Business and Marketing,
I chose Maersk to complete my internship particularly for two reasons. First,
Maersk is a prestigious world-leading shipping company with admirable
reputation. Second, by working with such a huge company, I would be able to
work in a culturally diverse and stimulating environment surrounded by new and
different work philosophy. After three months of internship with Maersk, I must
say, the experience gained was a valuable and beneficial one.
Going into the internship I set myself with five main
objectives to achieve out of the experience. Firstly, the main purpose of the
internship was to facilitate myself with trials and tribulations of the working
environment. Secondly, another objective I hoped to achieved whilst partaking
in this internship would be to better my time management skills. Also, I wanted
to improve my interpersonal relation skills by examining it from practitioners’
perspective, which I truly lacked. Other than that, another objective of this
internship was to apply all theories studied into practical working situations
and most importantly enhance my level of understanding and recognizing areas
for improvement.
I entered this internship with an open heart and mind hoping
to not only seek vast knowledge but also gain experience. And I can honestly
say that this internship provided me that platform. Starting out the internship
was a real challenge for me because I have always been a person that lacked
proper time management and organization skills. Hence, I had to adjust my sleep
pattern and organize my schedule efficiently. This internship has not only
given me a proper understanding regarding working life in general, but also on
how to discipline myself in managing the copious amount of workload under
pressure.
I began disciplining myself by planning a structured timetable
that enabled me to arrange my work schedule to accommodate my personal life.
This permitted me to adapt to a professional working culture. I knew that
working life would required me to adjust my sleep pattern therefore I told
myself to get sufficient amount of sleep in order to be fresh and orderly in
the workplace. Results were shown when I manage to be at work on time
regularly. Besides, I learned to manage my time better at work by allocating
enough hours mainly based on three different daily tasks – calling/following up
on customers’ shipments, taking ownership on issues and problems faced by
customers and following up on E-mails.
What’s more, being placed under the customer care team was
quite a bit of a challenge knowing that being a customer care consultant required
tons of patience, politeness and the ability to solve problems within a short
time frame. As a representative to the customer care team, I had to be mentally
prepared to deal with the ups and downs of people’s attitudes, which can become
uncontrollable at times. As time goes by, I gained better awareness of my own
level of patience and tolerance, and seek various methods to improve these
skills. I learned how to be calm and handle customers who yelled and rant, or
became so irate and furious that they hang up and not forgetting, customers who
called back repeatedly until they are able to daunt someone to the point where
they were honored their shipping waivers, earliest shipping departure and so
on.
Furthermore, working life enabled me to come out of my shell
as an introvert. I realized hoping to get work done by isolating myself from
the rest is impossible in the working world. The work done by the team revolves
around each and everyone else’s work, hence the importance of communication
among colleagues and teamwork comes into the picture. I opened myself to the
possibility of expressing my views and opinions to my colleagues, during
meetings, as well as clients in the workplace. With this, it made me far more
confident in my communicative skills as well as further improved my interpersonal
relation skills. Interning at Maersk also placed me in a situation whereby I
felt the importance of stepping up as a leader during nerve-racking
circumstance. Decision-making is one particular attribute that defines a leader.
In particular circumstances during work, comprehensive decision is required to
be made almost immediately w
hen facing unusual situation
regarding shipments. I encountered this predicament during my first few weeks
of the internship – A customer was very upset when our team failed to submit a
custom document to the loading port in US which caused a delay of seven days to
their shipment. Detention at port charges were charged to customers, however
the customer was unwilling to make payment as it was noticeably our mistake. As
my supervisor was away then, I had to consult my colleagues along with the
Operations team manager by persuading him to make this an exceptional waiver
case as losing this particular customer may bring about a huge loss to us. I
had to sacrifice my time by promising him that I will monitor the shipment
carefully, co-ordinate with the terminal operator and converse with the
customer until the issue is resolved and shipment materialized.
At the end of the day, I learned to be adaptable in order to
be responsible at work. For example, to be able to take on and handle more
things on short notices, take in hand work that is not listed in my job
description and fill in time gaps when there were any. Additionally, I found
myself instilled with a positive outlook by learning to accept things that
cannot be changed, and work things out in order to achieve a positive result.
One of the best ways in doing so is to smile and use humor to help push an
optimistic attitude and share it with the rest of my team members. Another
skill that I learned during this internship period is that I must always strive
to do my best in everything I do and not only to achieve superior results, but
as an own satisfaction. Even if I fail, I will still be able to remain positive
rather than regretting not pumping in enough effort, as I believe, whatever
that is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
I have always known that I am a little bit of a perfectionist.
Facing mistakes and failure has always been difficult for me. This one
particular incident that happened during the internship helped me understand
the concept of embracing mistakes and learn from them. This particular incident
involved me providing a customer with wrong information on his shipment that
cost quite a big lump sum. However with the continuous support and reassurance
from my colleagues and managers that everyone makes mistakes, I now realized
that it offer us room for improvement and learning provided that it should not
be repeated. Thus, this skill gained was beneficial to my own personal
development because as the saying goes “A man’s errors are his portals of
discovery.”
Although
faced with a few challenges within the three months, the hard work paid off
when I achieved all five objectives aforementioned. This internship was an eye
opener for me towards the actual working world. From having minimum knowledge
and understanding towards the workplace, I slowly began immerse myself with routine
work life schedule that eventually I become accustomed to it. Not only that, one
of the abilities that I managed to grasp was to be a trusted partner whom
customers and colleagues can rely on for advice and help.
In conclusion, the internship at Maersk empowered my
proficiency to look beyond the obvious. For example, I learned how to work
thoroughly to identify the most appropriate solution by deliberately seeking to
understand how to navigate within the organization and when faced with problems.
Furthermore, I cultured myself with the concept that patience is a virtue in
the workplace. The ability to change your communication style to match the
needs of the customer requires plenty of patience and understanding. Hence, I
was able to acquire these traits during the internship. In addition, the
internship allowed me to developed strong interpersonal skills with a service
oriented and empathetic mindset. Working in this internship has truly been an
eye opening experience. Before starting this experience, my expectations were
always high regarding the potential skill sets and abilities that I would be
able to acquire. Looking back now, it has truly exceeded my expectations. I
believe the knowledge and skills attained will not only prepare myself for the
future work life but will also enable me to be confident in my future approach
of working life.
