An internship is the most valuable off campus activity that one can experience prior graduation. The primary purpose of the internship is to add value to the educational experience of students. It facilitates concrete experiences that encourage the link between theory and practice. An internship provides an experimental learning opportunity for students to apply the concepts; knowledge and skills gained in real situation, to evaluate the acceptability of a future career area, to increase their competitiveness for future employment and to develop an awareness of community, economic and social issues in a global society. The scope of internship includes the expectation for students to transform practical experiences into a thoughtful analysis of the internship. The students provide a scholarly evaluation of the educational benefits received, an appraisal of activity in which they were involved, and an insightful assessment of the overall value that internship contributed to their education. After all, it allows you to demonstrate your talents, build work experience, and to understand institutional organization. There are many fields in different industries that offer internship such as healthcare, retail merchandising, computer science, finance, marketing, administrative work, etc. Well, my internship was in retail merchandising and academic or clerical work.
The business of the retail merchandising involves creation of exciting presentations of products and ideas for customers. This is accomplished by the combined efforts of many executives and support staff within a retail organization. Retail merchandising is the best for field of industry for students majoring in management because it is very exciting place. It is the place one can meet different people with different background. I do not mean that only this direction of industry has diverse environment, other fields have it as well. However, retail merchandising the most suitable for students with no experience, where they come into direct contact with buyers and managers.
My internship actually was work which lasted more than one year. I was hires as sales associate, but did more managerial work as well. This simply put, I worked directly with sales management for Tourneau Inc. It is retail industry selling luxury products such as sold gold watches, and other high-level brands, and antique jewelry. My primary responsibilities were managing associates on the floor, implementing employee recognition programs, heading visual displays on floor. The other responsibilities were: handling customer’s complaints, keep track of the customer’s requests for certain products, contacting the client’s upon the arrival of products or basically establishing and keeping client’s relationship for future business, learning how to monitor inventory levels, gaining working knowledge of the store’s overall operation, projects relating to achieving sales and liquidation goals. The job also required the broad product knowledge.
The job was exciting full of obligations for everyday shift. Well, one of the biggest challenges I faced was the history of each brand. There are about thirty different brands in the store, and the whole store team should know at least the general history of the brands. Prior to this work, I worked in other industry, so selling luxury products was new line of industry me to. However, in order to show my abilities of product knowledge, I would do research on Internet in order to memorize key facts about the brand history. Usually the client with good knowledge of the brand history would come up and ask me: Is the movement of this watch used in other brand.” This kind of question demands to seek the help. This type of clients put barrier on your product knowledge. It shows one has limited product knowledge, and there are other information available and should be memorized.
The biggest project was to achieve the monthly goal. I would have to sell certain amount of products to achieve it. It required a lot of effort and travel. The first couple of months I barely managed more than a half of my goals. Right here I could identify my weakness and willingness to improve it. I spoke with assistant manager in order to solve problem. The result of our conversation to be willing to take risk and move on, not to give up at my weakest point of sale, rather to seek the way to out of complication. I had to develop my own strategies and methods to resolve problem. The description of the procedure was: to increase my product knowledge, establish smooth conversation with client, just answer client’s question regarding product, during interaction with client try not to talk about something else, but product, and lead the conversation “in the box” in order to close the sale, not out of box. Self-motivation also played major role in this procedure. Self-motivated people are always smiling; they are kind, and energetic. But, in order to achieve the criteria listed above; one must possess good communication skills and be the stone of establishment of smooth conversation.
As I said the beginning was very hard. There are the people who think they know more than I do. The day after conversation with manager, I started implementing the criteria of new assigned project. First, I motivated myself by telling I can do it, and by keeping indulgent smile on my face because with these two important techniques it creates friendly and comfortable atmosphere for clients. I was so positive in my ability to make my monthly goal. Day after day, week after week, I was capable to achieve it. I felt worthiness of all efforts that were put into this project, and recognized myself as valuable asset of organization. My motivation and energy level increased enormously.
Well, just about my one year of anniversary working for Tourneau, I was notified that upper-level management has made decision to lay off part-time employee. Just when the things were going the way I wanted, something always comes up to disturb it.
Being out of the work for full month, I researched the internet to find a job. On March 14, I applied at Loyola University at department of Government and Community Relations. It was a work-study position. I was hired as office assistant. The duties of the work are: report to the administrative secretary and b responsible for drafting letters of correspondence, answering phones, assisting in mailings, placing follow-up calls, distributing mail, setting-up meetings (book rooms, order food, coordinate schedule, run errands as they arise and keep supply inventory), manage prospect database, telemarketing update of database and follow up of direct mail. The requirements for this work are knowledge of Microsoft Office 2000, ability to perform mail-merges, excellent organizational skills, ability to work unsupervised, some knowledge of university structure, positive attitude and willingness to learn.
This work also had projects to be completed. One of the projects is taking care of cocktail party that president of Loyola hosts on April 30, 2003 at Springfield. The guests of the party will be Illinois Senators and Representatives and the others. I had to make sure that the office address matches the address stored in our database because recently the whole Illinois General Assembly went through small changes. I need their office address to sent invitation cards to that address. I used an Internet resource to obtain correct address. I have been working about three days on it. After that, with the help of administrative secretary we addressed around 150 invitation cards. It required the hand-written style to make it look classical.
The description of second project id re-labeling all the files in cabinets and sorting them out as federal, state, and local files. This project demanded using Word Perfect with Avery Wizard function to generate new labels for files. It took me a whole week to complete it. But, the job is more logical thinking than retail one. In this present work, I can apply the computer knowledge into practice. The supervisor tells you what to do, and it is up to you to develop your own strategies and methods as to how to complete given task or project. The outcome of my project generated supervisor’s satisfaction, and the recognition as willing to learn and to move on.
In conclusion, internship at Tourneau was a great rewarding experience in retail. I was able to work closely with managers and buyers, so I gained a lot of managerial experience, product knowledge, and company’s operation. True, I worked in sales floor, but also helped in managerial responsibilities. Achieving monthly goal shows you a way to better employment and better recognition. Retail internship in comparison with administrative work is different. Administrative work requires using computer programs, and developing own strategies. This job relates more to my academic experience than retail. In addition, the benefits of these two internships are gain valuable experience that relates to your major, learn news kills and competencies, clarify your career goals, build experience on your resume, develop confidence and learn to interact professionally wit peers, learn additional skills such as business writing and public speaking, get jump on networking for future job contacts.
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