Marketing Intern Review

My city of choice was Shanghai, I got to intern at a company that specialized in the import and export of large stainless steel products and machinery. I was in their marketing department. I enjoyed the work that I did, of course like any other job you need to spend some days learning how everybody works and being part of a team.

I felt like I was part of the team that I worked with especially with our tasks of marketing research into new markets for the company to get into. The 2 guys and lady I worked with were really helpful in the beginning and as I got more confident with the work, I got a much heavier work load.

My internship was full time like everybody else; I worked 8 hours a day with a lunch hour break. Some days were easy with admin work for our department, other days were full devoted to research and analysis work.

I am a business major and with this internship I got to understand particularly the import/export business and all the background work that needs to be done to get to a specific target market. I hope that some of the things I learnt from my internship will be helpful in my future job, and that I got this exposure from China

I largely interacted with my colleagues in the marketing department- it was actually a bit separated from all the other departments from what I saw. My colleagues were always pleasant, I don't speak a word of Chinese and they were gracious enough to help me order food at lunch time when everybody else was ordering...things of that sort.

It was fairly well organised, I didn't encounter major problems since Go Abroad China has a coordinator in Shanghai and she was the one who taught me how to catch the metro to work. I was also lucky enough to get a stipend with the internship company.

I would advise anybody looking to go to Shanghai to have a little bit of flexible money. Shanghai is international, it has good entertainment spots but with so many foreigners living there, exported food and beverages, the costs can really add up especially if you like a social life.

Some opportunities outside of work only came during the weekends. I got to know some of the other people that also came with Go Abroad China and we would all go out together, I tried archery at some point.