Thursday 2 January 2020

Module review for AY19/20 Semester 1: NM3550Y Communications & New Media Internship

From 22 July 2019 to 6 December 2019, I was an intern at GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, as part of the Compulsory Internship Programme (CIP), a graduation requirement for all students majoring in Communications & New Media (CNM). I was posted to the Human Resource & Organization Department (HROD) for 10 weeks and the Corporate Affairs & Communications (CAC) department for 10 weeks. My work in HROD mainly involved generating content for internal communication. At CAC, I supported routine news monitoring tasks and created posts and feature articles for the company intranet and LinkedIn page.

Life was busy enough that I was constantly patting myself on the back for having the foresight to clear all my other graduation requirements by the end of the preceding semester, freeing myself to focus solely on the internship. If I hadn't bitten the bullet and taken six modules, one more than the recommended five, in a few previous semesters to rack up the credits, I would've had to take iBLOCs (Internal Blended Learning Online Courses) to ensure that I would be able to graduate on time. That would have added lots of stress and I would probably not have had such a good time during my internship.

As it stands, I took just the internship module this semester. Here's the usual review.

NM3550Y: Communications & New Media Internship


MCs: 12 - mandatory for all CNM majors, to be taken in ARS3


Delivery:

20 weeks of full-time employment at an external organisation, doing work that is relevant to CNM

Assessment:

Pre-departure online multiple-choice quiz based on a series of short lecture videos about the internship programme = 5%
Preliminary report introducing the employer, job scope, and expectations for the internship = 10%
Mid-semester portfolio reflecting on the values of the organisation and soft skills required to thrive in the job = 25%
Final report consolidating the content from the preliminary and mid-semester reports and new insights, learning points, and reflections + presentation slides summarising the final report with photos, illustrations, and diagrams + fill up the module survey sent by the CIP team to gather student feedback = 40%
Worksite supervisor's feedback = 20%

Module: 9/10

This is a very important module in the context of CNM. Communications and interactive media are very "active" disciplines. Practitioners don't sit around all day talking theories. They get down and dirty, hammering out products that are real, tangible, and can be perceived by other people. For example, public relations professionals write news releases and generate media coverage for their clients. User interface designers create applications that are easy for laypeople to use. An internship is an invaluable opportunity for CNM students to get on-the-job training and learn practical hard and soft skills that they wouldn't be able to in a classroom. For this reason alone, the CIP is well worth having as an integral part of the CNM curriculum.

One area for improvement is in the assessment components. I find it very inexplicable that as interns, we faithfully plug away at our jobs day in and day out, but can only get recognised for our work performance with a possible maximum of 20% of our total grade. This means that even if an intern does everything right and the supervisor is very happy, the intern can score only up to 20% of the total marks available for the module. The other 80% is determined by three written reports. I'm not doubting the importance of reflecting on one's learning experiences, but I think the weightages of the various components can be tweaked a bit. The supervisor's feedback should account for 40%, and the preliminary report can be removed and the weightage for the mid-semester report brought down to 20%. The final report can stay at 40%, as it guides the interns to consolidate everything they have gleaned from the internship. My principle behind this rearrangement is that interns are out there to learn in a real world setting, so they should be rewarded accordingly for good performance in that real world setting. When these interns are back in school and take on the role of being students again, they have plenty of opportunities to write reports. There's no need to place such a heavy emphasis on report-writing in this practice-oriented, experiential module.

My worksite: 10/10

The rest of this post will recap my personal journey as I embarked on my 20-week stint in GIC. GIC is Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, which basically means it invests money that the government has saved over the years. The aim is to grow these government savings, which are actually called the reserves, so that there will be enough money for the future.

Obviously, I am not trained in investment or finance, so I didn't do any of the actual moneymaking. Instead, I worked in the corporate services side of the company, which supports the investment side by taking care of things like recruitment, wellbeing, technology, and communication with the public and other stakeholders. I was rotated among three teams.

First, I helped the Graduate Recruitment team draft new materials for their outreach activities. The Graduate Recruitment team, a part of HROD, is in charge of attracting interns and fresh graduates to join the company. They administer three main programmes:
  • GIC Scholarship Programme (full-term and mid-term): offers sponsorship for undergraduate degree courses and internship and mentorship opportunities with GIC
  • GIC Internship Programme: a 10-week summer internship for undergraduates which also serves as a selection method for potential GIC Scholarship holders and/or full-time employees after graduation
  • GIC Professionals Programme: fresh graduates can join the company under this programme, where they will be given intensive training and rotation through three departments in the company to identify the area in which they can contribute the most (other companies have similar programmes, often called "management associate" or "management trainee" programmes)
More details HERE.

Second, I assisted the Rewards & Engagement team, another part of HROD, in their employee engagement efforts. My favourite project was writing features on employees with interesting stories to tell. For example, there were some who were juggling between work commitments and taking care of their ageing parents. I interviewed them to find out more about their lives, and wrote about their experiences and reflections in a short series of articles for the rest of the company to read. I was humbled and inspired by the realisation that behind every single one of the colleagues I saw each day was a person I didn't see: a dedicated parent, a filial child, a loving spouse. And I then saw the logic behind many of the pro-family policies that GIC offers its staff. For example, staff can use the flexible work arrangements to fulfill both family care duties and job commitments. Working mothers who need to carry out minor child-minding errands outside the office can do so throughout the day whenever they need to, without having to waste entire days of their annual leave.

My third rotation was with CAC, the department which deals with all of GIC's communications with external parties such as the news media and directly with Singaporeans through social media. CAC also supports internal communications efforts, for instance by administering the company intranet and producing interesting features for employees to watch or read.

This was my longest and most intensive rotation because it was most directly related to my course of study. I learned many things during this part of my internship.

For one, I developed a sense of responsibility. Every morning, I had to push out the daily news monitoring report to the senior management of the company which compiled and summarised the important news stories about the company that had been published during the preceding 24 hours. This is considered a basic, entry-level skill in the corporate communications world (the industry name for this process is "media monitoring"). But nonetheless, screwing up and incurring the wrath of any of the head honchos, such as if they had noticed that I had missed out on an important piece of news, would've been tremendously embarrassing for me, my bosses, and the department as a whole as that daily report is one of the key products of the department. It was a nerve-racking burden at first, but I gradually grew into the role and by the end, I felt a sense of ownership over it and was sad to relinquish it. I learned to trust in the system that had been built to facilitate the process, my colleagues who were supervising the process, and most importantly myself to execute my part of the process correctly.

My work also required me to correspond with people from all levels of the company, including managing directors. On one occasion, I even exchanged comments on Yammer, a Facebook-like platform for enterprises, with the Chief Executive Officer himself! From these experiences, I learned not to be intimidated by rank and to view everyone as humans first and foremost.

And that to me was my biggest takeaway from this internship: confidence. In the context of work-related tasks, this refers to the ability to say "Yes, I can" and mean it. I can write articles that people enjoy reading. I can analyse a piece of text, catch mistakes, and make it better. As a disabled person, realising that there are things I can do well is an empowering feeling. It sounds cliched but it's true.

In the context of interpersonal relations, confidence means the courage to interact and talk to people I'm not familiar with. Because if I don't interact and talk to people I'm not familiar with, I'll never become familiar with them, right? My colleagues in CAC and HROD started off as strangers to me, but through a combination of their warm and welcoming nature and my own determination to overcome my initial shyness, I eventually opened up to them and now consider them friends.

To end off this post, let me just say that I will be returning to the CAC department at GIC on a permanent, full-time basis in 2021 after I graduate from NUS. It was an easy decision for me to accept their offer. The employment terms they offered me were fair and I appreciated that they didn't try to (pardon my coarseness) screw me over with a lowball salary just because I'm disabled. Just as they did during my internship, they treated me no differently from a normal staff member. Never was I made to feel like merely an intern, or worse, a disabled intern. I was allowed to contribute my fair share, and was in turn given my fair share of rewards and recognition. I got along well with my CAC teammates, so truly, there was no compelling reason not to agree to go back.

My result for the module: A+

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