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Ahmos El Roudany – B.S.E MAJOR CLASS OF 2020
Enderun Colleges, Taguig – Supervised by Loida Flojo: Director, Enderun Extention
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My position on paper says that I am an intern working in the Digital Transformation department. However, I generally worked with the Enderun Extension and sometimes the Enderun Admission team. I would be assigned tasks by my supervisor. However, my supervisor is the Director of the Enderun Extension team which makes her a very busy person. So when she is not around to give me tasks, I would ask the others if they have a task for me to accomplish. My supervisor would give me difficult and long tasks. The difficulty comes from the fact that this is my first time working and doing these tasks. My supervisor would also often give me minimal instructions which leads to me learning as I work.
My first task was to do a SWOT analysis on the coworking space that is ran by Enderun Extension. I finished within a day and a half. There were a lot of terms that I was not familiar with. I learned SWOT from my classes in Enderun so it wasn’t difficult. I worked in our Atrium since I haven’t had my orientation yet. After this task I finally entered the office. The office had an odd layout. There were empty desks that get filled out by whoever needs one. I would see someone I never met before use a desk and be gone the next day. I could also borrow the desks of the directors as long since they’re often out and busy. At first, I was shy to borrow them but eventually I got over it since I needed their phones for my tasks.
My supervisor gave me the task to do competition checks on other schools. I was told which data I needed to gain from the competition. I was also asked to inquire about what certificates did the other schools had for all levels. This was difficult. I would use a false persona to get the information but I can only get information about a level once or twice since it would be odd if I inquired about All levels. Sometimes I get lucky and the person on the other side would tell me everything or transfer me to the right people. However, there were a lot of people who did not know much and would transfer me to wrong departments. The constant transferring of the calls massively increased the time I spent per school.
There were a couple of tasks that took a long time to finish. One of them was that I had to input information from business cards into a google sheets file. The main difficulty was knowing which country the person is from. I eventually learned the difference between Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. For example, Korean letters seem to have a lot of “o” connected to the lines. When I can’t figure out the person’s country, I ask my superior. I respected her even more since she would just glance at the card and tell me the country easily. Another task was to organize her podium/drawer. There were so many documents such as contracts and letters. Not only did I have to sort them in an orderly way, I had to input all contracts into a Google Sheet. It hasn’t been organized for around 6 years so my back was painful for a while. I was satisfied when it was all organized though.
My greatest accomplishment was to have a 19% closing rate with sales calls. This was mainly because I had an amazing team leader. When he initially demonstrated how to call, he was full of energy and emotion. He learned what the customer was interested in and assured them that we had that. Then after the call he gave me tips on how to talk with the person on the other side of the call. We became eventually became friends and he was the main reason why I worked as hard as I did. Every time I think I could do better; I consult with him. Which is why I think I did well with my tasks.
Luckily my course taught me how to work with Excel. Creating formulas helped me multiple times during the course of my internship. One data that I had to get was the semester breaks of each school. There was data from past competition checks but it was un-organized. If they start at June then their break is around December and so on. Using the “If and Then” formula, I cleared out an entire column within 5-10 minutes.
During my first day I was very stiff and awkward. I would always knock before entering the office. I didn’t have a set desk and I did not know what to do most of the time. But during my last day I was working with a team to organize a conference about influencing and I was teaching the new comers about what I learned like how to talk to potential clients and operate the google sheets file. I felt great when I left. Because I know that I earned a place for myself and that I was very helpful to my superiors.
This internship has affected my goals for the future. I was initially planning on starting a business as soon as I finish graduating. However, after working in Enderun I learned that there are so many things that I do not know. I now plan to work first to gain experience then eventually start a business when I know that I am ready.
During my internship I discovered that I disliked doing telephone calls. It requires me to be energetic and full of emotions when I am usually not. There was a time where I was having difficulties outside of work but I still had to call like I usually do which was not only difficult but extremely inefficient. I wouldn’t close anyone that day and would waste the leads. Surprisingly though, the tasks like “bring these documents/items to this office” gave me a peace of mind. I had a reason to go take a walk and get some fresh air. It also woke me when I get sleepy from monotonous work in Excel/Google Sheets. I also discovered how important coffee is. It would supply me enough energy for the morning.
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