Ma Chun Wai, Kelvin
BBA Information Systems,
Western Harbour Tunnel Co. Ltd.
Being an intern in the Western Harbour Tunnel Company Limited (WHTCL), I have attained various valuable, challenging, and practical experiences that I have never found in the past, which will be a cornerstone of my future career.In the internship, my duty was to be responsible for various parts of the system development processes, including (1) capturing and studying user's requirements, (2) drafting proposals on the system functions and system implementation flows, (3) designing database structure, and (4) implementing the Training Course & License Management system. Within the internship period, I involved in the following three system developments. The systems are listed as follows.
In this internship program, I was really impressed with the experience of making my university knowledge being practicable in the workplace. In handling the similar university project assignments, I was used to follow the sequence of conceptual (i.e. Entity-Relationship Diagram), logical, physical designs as the base of the database system development.When dealing with the same task in the workplace, I not only could apply this system development flow, but also adopted some object-oriented concepts in the programming part. Accordingly, I could speed up the design process, and improve the flexibility and accuracy in program coding. In future, I would be eager to explore more chances to apply the subject knowledge in a practicable way.In this past eight-week internship training, I had obtained lots of valuable hands-on experience in my post. It was far more than that I could expect before settling down for this post.Through the internship, I learned that it was always a need to communicate and clarify everything with my teammates, supervisor, and the management, in order to clear their ambiguities toward what I had done. I was appreciated that I was treated as a normal staff in Western Harbour Tunnel Company Limited for this eight-week internship period. During the office hours, I had to independently handle and tackle all the issues and obstacles relation to my system design and implementation task. When handling my work, I needed to critically analyze the user's requirements against the feasibility of the system functions. I believed that the sense of critical thinking could really help to raise the quality of my work.This internship training also enabled me to discover my personal strengths and weaknesses. In the period of designing the three database systems, I proposed various functions to fulfill the needs of the management, and most of the proposed functions and system flows were agreed by the management. It strengthened my confidence and incentives to critically study in user's requesting needs, and deliver optimal solution plan. In addition to the database design, I deeply explored and developed my interests in designing system application to serve user's application needs.
During especially the intensive programming period, I realized my weakness of programming task. Owing to the weakness, I paid extra focus on the accuracy of the programming flow. Despite unfamiliar with the Visual Basic Application, I could finally complete the task, and derived the system output that fulfilled the needs with user satisfaction. I really appreciated that I was offered this opportunity that helped me greatly on consolidating the confidence of my work.
Choy Wai Chung, Helen
BBA Information Systems,
Getz Bros. & Co. (HK) Ltd.
My intern job in Getz Bros. & Co. (HK) Ltd. was to assist in the company's ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) implementation project. Enterprise resource planning is an integrated software solution used to manage all business management functions of a company including planning, inventory/materials management, engineering, order processing, manufacturing, purchasing, accounting and finance, human resources, and more. My duties included studying and analyzing user requirement, modeling and documenting business process, data-mining analysis, as well as developing and designing software. I think this internship is trustworthy to me, since I have learned a lot of things from it especially in the new system demonstration section. In this demonstration, I realized that being an IT or IS professional not only required to have specific knowledge in IT or IS fried, but also a general knowledge in different aspects, for example sales and purchase, logistic, even in finance and account field. I found a number of improvements after participating in this course. Firstly, my confidence in presentation has increased after I joined the two-day training workshop. It also gave me an opportunity to learn better communication and presentation skills like where should I stand when I am presenting, how to hold the pointer, etc. Secondly, during the working period, my written English has improved a lot after finishing the minutes and analyzing report writing. This job gave me a lot of chance to practice my writing skills. Thirdly, my interpersonal and communication skills also improved in the job when I gain much more working experience. Now I will not shy to speak up and to ask questions, since I had a lot of chance of working with different aged people and interviewing other staff for printout requirements independently in the company. I learned there were a lot of ways in asking questions. I learned some interview techniques which enabled me to collect user's requirements more accurately. Interviewing different staff needed to use different questioning skills and methods. Besides, after attending several meetings in the company, I learned a lot of skill for holding a meeting. Also, my minutes and report writing skills that I learned in the English communication courses in CityU were strengthened.
Lastly, I feel my working attitudes have also improved. I am now having more understanding the expectation of a supervisor to his/her employees. Since I did not have any working experience before, it is a wonderful for me to realize the supervisor expectations and let me to become a better staff in the future.
Lai Hiu Man, Karen
BBA Information Systems,
CSC Computer Sciences H.K. Ltd. ¡V Financial Services Group
In this internship at CSC Computer Sciences H.K. Ltd., I was appointed to follow a project that developed a web-based application for financial use. The application was a web site that helped to ease and fasten the process of ordering for certain products through putting it online. I was responsible to improve the outlook and build new pages for other products. Testing of the web and preparing documents were also part of my responsibilities. Besides building up web site, testing it, and preparing document for it, I also needed to present my work to my colleagues. There was always a belief in my mind that, students studying computer related subjects like us didn't need to speak often, but after this internship I found that I was wrong! During my intern in CSC, despite talking alone with my supervisor about the project, I had many chances to make formal presentation before the senior colleagues and the boss. Now I am brave enough to ask and give suggestion. Before the internship I was a passive person, very often I was scare to ask and talk. After making a number of troubles, I began to ask whenever I got confuse, and asked until I got clear to a problem. Asking question while communicating with colleagues would reduce the errors that might have made, and this increase efficiency of my work! Although the workload was quite heavy, I gained satisfaction from it when I knew that the end product was adopted by the boss. I really appreciated the effort of the whole team in this project.
After the 9 weeks' time in CSC, it seemed that I knew more about myself and made clear of my career path. I determined to pursue my career path as a programmer.
Lee Kwan Piu, Edy
BBA Management,
Arnhold & Co. Ltd.
During my internships period, I was employed as a Human Resource assistant in Human Resource Department, Finance & Administration Division, Central Administration Unit in Arnhold & Co. Ltd. My major responsibilities are to provide assistance to some of the Human Resource Process. For instance, resume scanning, selecting, human resource testing, writing job advertisement, payroll of Dougguan factory, preparing payroll analyses and any Ad-hoc projects. I was very delighted to have this opportunity to work in Arnhold since the position I acquired is very compatible to my major study, HRM. It was really a through and comprehensive learning in Arnhold. On the first day in Arnhold, the first task I was given to do is to copy three hundreds files. To be frank, it did give me a little bit hard feeling as I was afraid that my internship period would be dull and colorless at all? Just like the situation told by some of the senior students. This hard feeling stayed for only a little while. I told myself the first and most important thing should be kept in mind when work is ¡§fulfilling the boss¡¦s needs¡¨. The belief generated from the copying and filing task did benefit me a lot. This positive working attitude brought me a great change in the first day I work in Arnhold. Perhaps I had shown my sincerity of even doing a simple task; my supervisor had a very good impression on me. As a result, she decided to not let me only do such simple and dull jobs, but some more challenging jobs. The task assigned to me is an ad-hoc project required by the I.T. department manager. In fact, my supervisor was responsible for most of the Human Resource Management Process and in charge of the payroll of Dougguan factory. This payroll system was implemented by the I.T., Accounts and HR departments. This time, the I.T. manager asked my supervisor to do an Overtime payment report. It was to evaluate the reasons and consistency of the overtime situation of Dougguan workers by presenting few charts. This was an unforgettable experience I had ever had. From this, I learned the belief of faith in doing a good job is important. Besides, I think what make one¡¦s be valuable is to give creative and useful ideas to the organization. In other words, to contribute as much as you can and you¡¦ll gain finally. For me, there are several main gains from this internship period. The basic working attitude is to be serious of my own job responsibility, but the way to do business is to ¡¥be flexible¡¨. We may have many information, knowledge, ideas, value gained from books. But these are only for reference and the final decision is made by people. Moreover, ¡§good communication skill is the key to succeed¡¨ in every positions. I could see this key allows people know how well you are doing and thus, acquiring a contributive imagine to the boss. Also, this key may help you to ask for assistant if you have difficulties. In the management level, it also serves as a tool to divert human resource. The concept of ¡§never give up and win¡¨ attitude also benefited myself. I just kept paying positive working attitude to my work tasks. This helped me to break all the troubles.
Finally, I become a more confident person. I could maintain patience and consistency whenever I face problems. Also, I had more courage to communicate with people no matter he/she is senior of junior post. This would be an advantage when I work in the future.
Mak Lai Yi, Crystal
BBA Management,
Jardine OneSoultion ¡V Human Resources
I interned in the recruitment team of the Human Resource Department of JOS. The department is responsible for recruitment, staff relations, training and development issues. My duties were to assist in daily operations in these areas. Also, I had to work on the ad hoc projects if necessary.From this internship, I learned the actual recruitment working flows of the company. It was a bit different between the theory of recruitment flows and the real operations of a HR department. Only learning from books, I did not have much knowledge of concepts of what the HR was doing for recruitment. After having solid experience, I understood more about how and what HR did for recruiting a new staff.During the internship, I actively participated and assist in the company Performance Excellence Aware. I learnt much about how the company motivated their employees and built up a good relationship between employers and employees through the award. Also, as this award represented the recognition of the performance of the employees by the company, I could clearly know the role of HR and how HR complied with the policy of the company by showing recognition to the staff. Besides, I felt very lucky to participate in publication of the company newsletter since I could gain much experience in handling such kind of common HR jobs.Apart from understanding more about the actual working procedures or flows in HR, I learned some communication and interpersonal skills which are very important and necessary to develop career in HR field. For examples, how to deal with internal staff concerning their enquiry and arrange the interviews for the line managers and greeting the candidates. I also learned the correct, active and positive learning attitudes, that is, taking initiatives and observing others. This could be one of the important tools for people to success.
To conclude, this internship really helped me to understand more about the real operations of a HR department and enriched my knowledge in this field. I also found that I am interested in working this field for my future career and hope that I could have the opportunity to work in the area of compensation and benefits as well in the future.
Cheng Ka Yiu, Matthew
BBA Marketing,
Wo Kee Hong Group - Mega Warehouse
I was assigned to participate in 2 projects during my internship in Wo Kee Hong Group. One of the projects was to access and improve the in-store customer services and hotline customer services. A literature review was done before designing a questionnaire. Areas in marketing research, services marketing and consumer behavior were covered. The knowledge about how to assess and improve the customer service quality, and the importance and the benefits of customer service quality were reviewed. After literature review I needed to formulate and complete a questionnaire after patronizing each store. I tried my best to formulate the questionnaire based on the findings in the literature review and the secondary research. When designing the questionnaire, I discussed the details of questionnaire with my classmates who provided some valuable opinions to me. Then, I conducted the mystery shopping in eight Mega Warehouse cutlets. I would assess the whole process of services: the welcoming, the services, the paying process, staff¡¦s dressing, manners, knowledge, eye contact, smile, gesture, posture, voice, tone and courtesy etc. After visiting each store, I would fill in the questionnaire immediately. I needed to prepare an assessment report on the findings from the mystery shopping. Then, all the findings from the eight stores were grouped together to have an overall view on the in-store customer service quality. For the hotline customer services, a report was generated for each time¡¦s conversation. Finally, areas of improvement were recommended. After the assessment, manual of greeting for customers was prepared as guidelines for the frontline staff. Moreover, I was assigned to design ¡§Point-of-Purchase¡¨ (POP) for the hire purchase services of the seven banks. I also needed to prepare a list of each bank¡¦s hire purchase method, the list for tender code and merchant code for internal use. Besides, I needed to design a stand for discounts for Hong Kong Medical Association (HKMA). I have leant many things from the assignments. Firstly, I have learnt to plan everything before starting to do anything. I need to be more independent when working. Thirdly, I have learnt to work very carefully. Even a simple task such as checking the terms, I also need to pay attention to it. In the assignment of conducting a survey, I could apply the theories and concepts learnt in the university. I could have chances to face challenges (to be a mystery shopper) and changes (delay of the implementation of the manuals and POP¡¦s). Besides, I could develop my working attitudes in the intern job as I need to work seriously all the time. At the same time, I found that I needed to improve my computer skills and communication skills as well. Also, I had chance to design many POPs. My supervisor appreciated my work and I discovered that my designing skills are quite good. However, I think that there are still many rooms to further improve myself. I can learn software such as PhotoShop to enhance my designing skills.
Just like the slogan of FB3800 "Learning in a Real-World Classroom", I think that the best way to learn is to practice in the real business fields. I gained real life working experience from the intern job. This experience was very valuable for me, as I didn¡¦t have any working experience in marketing fields before.
