Category: Kyle

Interning at EVBN the last 2 months has allowed me identify my strengths and weakness when it comes to my performance in the work environment. Some of my strengths include professional confidence and communication as well as my flexibility and networking skills. However some of my weakness are workplace initiative, focus, and business knowledge. With this being my first internship along with the fact it was international came with its fair share of challenges. What I quickly realized is that my self-confidence I already had within myself was able to translate to the work place as well as my strong communication skills. I found out that I approach and engage with all kinds of people, whether they be young, old, a local, expat, a businessman, or even a coffee shop hostess.

As far as my weaknesses I realized that staying focus is hard if the task at hand isn’t challenging nor mentally stimulating. This also plays into my work place initiative, if I am really excited about my work I would be more willing to seek out new projects and tasks that challenge and interest me. I would also specify that business knowledge is only a weakness for me now because I am inexperienced and just getting started. I know for sure that next year I will be more business savvy and have more industry knowledge through my involvement on campus and surrounding myself with mentors and people more experienced than I.

This overall experience working abroad has helped contribute to my professional development through the different situations and environments I was exposed to. I now know that I can handle myself fairly well in a business environment as far as my social skills goes. As far as career aspirations I now know that I want to be more international and I am more open to the idea of interning for an American company in one of their locations overseas. This trip also helped with my personal growth because I was really able to see what being an adult is like. Having to take care of myself as far as eating right, exercising, and staying healthy but also other things like budgeting, laundry, work-life balance, and shopping.

Overall the key takeaways from my internship abroad is two points. One, make sure you pick a career that is interesting and makes you excited to come in work every (that also has a good work life-balance) and two, treat everyone with respect and kindness no matter what they look like and where they’re from. I just want to thank my University, family, and God for the amazing opportunity I had to intern abroad. This is something I will never forget and forever cherish.

A time I felt most proud during my internship was when I held and conducted my first business meeting. For our upcoming Food and Beverage Trade Mission in September my company is looking for local venues to host our event. Usually we look at different hotels around the area looking at prices, layout, capacity, and overall ambiance to decide if that location would be a good fit for our needs. So, about a week ago I had the opportunity to go to a networking event hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce. And after chatting and mingling with expats and local Vietnamese businessmen and women I was approached by a lady who recognized my company off my business card name-tag. She quickly introduced herself as Michelle and told me that she has been in contact with someone for my company (my co-worker who got hired around the same time as me). She then offered me her business card which I graciously accepted (with 2 hands a slight bow) and handed her mine. I immediately thanked her for approaching me, chatted with her for a couple more minutes, then concluded our conversation telling her I would get back to her as soon as I got back to the office. The following morning I told my supervisor what had happened (she was proud and impressed) and told me to reach out to the Michelle, to schedule a business meeting in we can discuss prices, the venue, accommodations, and services that Pullman Hotel can offer us. I sent her an email and she replied agreeing on the time and date to meet later that week. A couple day later Michelle came to our office with her colleague David and my supervisor and I went to our business meeting up stairs we talked business. I was able to negotiate, read and interpret the nonverbal cues, ask intelligent questions, and overall represent my company very well. I felt very much like a professional and an adult- I was proud of myself. We are now currently in the process of securing a deal with Pullman in the near future.

With my time in Vietnam coming to an end soon, I can confidently say that living here in Ho Chi Minh City has changed the way I look at the world. My perspective is now more globalized. I have never been outside the U.S for such a long period of time let alone this far away from home however I’m forever thankful I made the decision and had the support of my family and university to make this experience possible. I’ve learned more about myself both personally and professional during my time abroad as well as the world and how truly big it is with people from all different walks of life. I believe now more than ever how important to respect and love one another no matter the background because at the end of the day, we are all human.

Working for EVBN has taught me about what working in the consulting industry is like. The first thing I quickly learned on the job is how important it is to be informed and well-acquainted with everything that is going within the sector you are working in. As a Business developer my role requires me to provide expertise and pros and cons to European SMEs on the Vietnamese market. For example, I specifically am working in the Food & Beverage sector, so I am interacting with my clients directly and giving them consulting advice as to why it’d be a good strategic business decision to expand their product to the Vietnamese F&B industry.

After working with EVBN for over a month now I understand the strengths and weakness of my organization. A strength is the fact that we are co-founded by the European Union so our network and resources available to us is extensive. On the other hand, one of our weaknesses in our business development department. We are extremely understaffed with inexperienced individuals running the operations. This makes it hard for my supervisor to count on some of the team to complete certain tasks that are normally done in-house so she has to outsource responsibilities and tasks in order for it to be good quality. However, there are many opportunities in my company due to the nature of our industry. Right now, most industries are looking bullish because of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement that the government officials of both parties signed just last week. So, getting companies to come to Vietnam is looking very opportunistic in the years to come. However, there are undeniable threats. First is the stability of the EU. If the EU continues to go through political strife then many of its recourses and focus will shift from international to domestic.

Outside of work, an amazing moment I just recently had on my internship abroad was my weekend trip to Ha Long Bay. Deemed one of the 7 natural wonders of the world, I was able to see the natural beauties of northern Vietnam with my UF colleagues. We were able to spend the weekend on an Island and rock climb, tube, kayak, and play volleyball with young people from all across the world. It was such blessing and amazing time.

The most challenging aspects of my internship is being proactive and staying motivated. The project I am working on currently has me reaching out to potential exhibitors and other clients on a daily basis. Specifically, mass emailing and cold calling can be one of the less attractive parts of my internship. Whether that be getting hung up on or receiving the cold shoulder through unopened emails a lot of my work can sometimes leave me feeling discouraged and often demotivated. And not to mention the language barrier between me and my potential clients makes communication all the more difficult. However what this experience is teaching me is to never give up. There are very few things we have total control over in our lives and one of those things that we do is our attitude. It’s okay to acknowledge some situations you face as not the most ideal however it’s not okay to have a constant bad attitude becoming a negative influence to others. So I just remind myself daily to keep showing up to work day in and day out and persevere because I’ll never know when I’ll hear a yes on the other side.

One of the best features of my internship is having the opportunity to go to networking events and meet different kinds of people. I was able to attend the Australian Network of Commerce networking event 2 weeks ago as well as the American Chamber of Commerce Networking event last week here in Ho Chi Minh City. What I’ve discovered is that this is one of the best way to meet a demographically diverse group of people. Previously during the exhibition my company hosted 2 weeks ago I was able to schedule one of my contacts I met at the AusCham networking night for a B2B meeting. This is something that I am proud of because it was me being proactive and putting myself in new situations that I was able to create a tangible positive out of it. I’m thankful to be in a city where opportunities like this exist especially with everything being international to the point where when someone talks to me I don’t just represent my university and/or my state but I represent America as a whole.

Being here for a little over a month now I  started to discover the dishes that I like. One of my favorite food here would have to be “com ức gà xối mỡ, ốp la, cơm them, đùi gà”. This is my go to order on Grab. Basically what it is is chicken, rice, and fried egg. It’s absolutely delicious and it fills you up so quick all for just about $3.50. Vietnam I’ll for sure miss you.  

The new project that I will be working on for my remaining time here is the Food and Beverage Trade Mission EVBN is organizing during September. This Trade Mission will take place from September 9th to the 14th 2019, with hundreds of participants from the F&B industry, machinery companies in the Food industry, and equipment for HORECA (Hotel/Restaurant/Café). My department specifically will organize tailored B2B agendas with interested contacts & prospects in Hanoi & Ho Chi Minh City for participants, an opportunity to meet distributors, buyers, and partners in Vietnam, network with European players already established in Vietnam & hear about their experience in entering the Vietnamese market and lastly refer and introduce participants to EVBN & its partners’ business network. The department that I work now has 3 active employees including myself. They are both Vietnamese ladies and one is 21 year old an intern who just graduated University and the other one is about 25 and has been working for EVBN for a while. My supervisor usually delegates tasks to the senior lady in our department and the information and tasks usually get trickled down through her. It difficult to evaluate the strength and weakness of my co-workers. We are all independent workers so there is hardly any conversation between each other. However we do meet with our supervisor in a meeting room about once a week in order to determine the objective and goals of our department so we don’t necessarily need to have a lot of communication between one another because we are all working on accomplishing the same task. One thing I’ve learned from living in HCMC by myself is that adulting is difficult. I’ve been here for a month already (time flies) and I’m starting to realize how huge of a responsibility it is to take care of yourself. From staying healthy, exercising, going to sleep early, eating the right foods, doing laundry etc. Everything takes deliberate action in order for results to happen. Because this is my first internship experience I know now how exhausting work is. Working from 8:30 to 6 is draining to the point where when I get home it’s difficult to summon energy to take care of myself to the degree I normally do back at home. However through this experience I now I can value work-life balance and it is something I need to keep at top priority when choosing a career. 

My supervisor is Rebecca Bauden and she is the Senior Event Manager for EVBN. Her main job and responsibility is to organize all upcoming events that EVBN hosts. This means handling all the logistics and behind the scenes of each event in order for it run smoothly and successfully. So, this past weekend my organization EVBN hosted our annual exhibition called EuroSphere-The European Art of Living. This is a massive event that my supervisor oversees. Part of the logistics involved were scheduling B2B meetings for our exhibitors who requested for them, marketing our event on our social media pages, setting up construction in the hotel hosting us, arranging interviews with our sponsors, etc. All that organization and planning by each separate department were all went through my supervisor for her approval. Ms. Rebecca has a strong personality. She is from France however she has lived all across the world. She’s very sharp and confident of herself. She knows how to read people and situations very well so she’s always making the best decisions in the room.

The department that I work in is pretty small. It’s comprised of me and two other Vietnamese co-workers, one of whom is an intern who just started a week after me. So in reality I have only one junior level co-worker who has been there longer than I who actually knows her way around our department. We used to have a French lady, Oceane, however she just left after our exhibition so now it’s only us 3 working apart of the Business Development department.

My role in EVBN is a business development officer. So for the last 2 weeks since I started I was helping my department schedule B2B meeting for our exhibitors. This meant doing cold calls, sending out emails, and compiling spread sheets of potential clients who would be a good fit as a potential partner for our clients. Now that our exhibition is over, I am going to be working on our new upcoming project, the Food & Beverage Trade Mission 2019, we are hosting in September.

Outside of work I am having a great time here in Ho Chi Minh City. What I started to realize is that I really enjoy going to networking events and meeting different kinds of people. The first day of our exhibition, the 14^th, we had a cocktail networking event for our exhibitors at night. So I was working the registration booth alongside my co-worker for about an hour. However about an hour into the event we closed the registration booth because all the exhibitors were signed in so my supervisor said I can go inside. I happily agreed and believe me, I had a great time. I was able to have amazing food, a couple of relaxing drinks by our sponsors, and had the chance to meet our exhibitors from all across Europe including Portugal, Sweden, Spain, and France just to name a few. H

My favorite experience of the night was seeing the fashion show I helped put together with my supervisor. Beautiful Vietnamese women in exotic outfits is a sight that words just can’t paint. All in all I am really enjoying my internship and the city itself. Every passing day I find something stunning and magical about this place and I can wait to see what next week has in store.

The organization I am working for this summer is called EU-Vietnam Business Network or EVBN. EVBN is an international trade consultant project co-funded by the European Union established in Ho Chi Minh City in 2014. The overall objective of EVBN is to increase exports and investments of the European Union (EU) to Vietnam through Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as well as strengthening the EU Business sector in Vietnam by facilitating market access through advocacy primarily with the Vietnamese Government. EVBN helps promote Vietnam as a high-potential trade and investment market to assure that EU companies are better able to exploit the growing opportunities in Vietnam and Vietnam as a gateway to the SEA regional market.

The first day of my internship was overwhelming yet underwhelming at the same time. I’ll explain why.  Upon my arrival to my company Mrs. Mayte Pernas, my supervisor’s boss, forgot that we (myself and my co-worker Danielle) were coming today. However, after being there for a couple of minutes already and having done research on my company prior I understood why our arrival had escaped her mind. One of the main events EVBN helps organize is called EuroSphere- a unique exhibition dedicated to bringing the premium European Art of Living to the Vietnam and Southeast Asia market. This event is scheduled to be hosted on the 14^th to the 16^th of June so exactly 11 days until its start. The whole office was busy and all-hands-on-deck on their upcoming exhibition. So, we didn’t have any work prepared for us or any guidance for the first couple of days- we were left to ourselves.

At this point I had to adapt. I knew that everyone at the office was busy and didn’t have the time to train or coach two new interns with this big event happening in the next week, so I had to take ownership and be responsible with my own time. So, I opened Microsoft Word and created a 15-page document going through the files on EVBN’s network of all the exhibitors we were hosting next week and complied brief company profiles on my laptop. This early decision on the first couple of days paid off because I was able to familiarize myself with each of our clients so that way when my coworkers talked about each company and the help that they needed I understood what market they operated in, their intention for coming the Eurosphere, and who was representing that and what country they came from.

My environment and culture of my workplace is pretty laid back. My company shares an office space with CCI France Vietnam (French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Vietnam), EuroCham (European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam), and the South-East Asia IPR SME Helpdesk . My organization gender demographic is 99% all female, with me being the 1% only male working for them, and the work culture is very lax. I clock-in in around 8:30/9 am and leave at 6 pm and I have an hour and a half lunch break. Everyone in the office is friendly and helpful so I am very excited to be interning for EVBN  for the next couple of months and I hope I can do my best and assist them in anyway possible.

Oh, what a week it has been. I’ve been in Vietnam for 10 days now and to say that we’ve done a lot would be an understatement. I think a lot of people on this trip would agree with me that they feel like they have been here for 2 months already. The cultural week that we did was amazing. Lead by our tour guide Long we were able to fully immerse ourselves in the Vietnamese culture and history. Specifically, one day that was culturally informative to me was our trip to the war museum and our trip to the Cu Chi District. On this trip I was able to learn more about the history of the Vietnam War but from a different perspective. I saw the many different war crimes committed and the tactical strategies both sides used during the war. I saw the effects of the deadly American chemical weapon Agent Orange and how they effected the kids and families not only during the war but after as well. In the Cu Chi District I saw firsthand the strategies the Vietnamese had when it came to engaging in warfare with the Americans. I crawled in the tunnels carved out by the former Vietcong army and was able to see how brilliant these people were.

I’ve only been here for 10 days but I can confidently say that Vietnam is an amazing country. I didn’t have that many expectations of the country prior to my arrival however every day there is always something new and exciting. The traffic is chaotic and unregulated, the people are friendly and nice, and the country’s potential for growth seems almost limitless. With everything I am learning about Vietnam I know that in 10-15 years Vietnam is going to make its presence known on the world stage not just in South East Asia. Going forward I hope to understand more about the culture.  A few cultural questions I would like to have answered is how natives feel towards Americans and what things are considered taboo in Vietnam.  I hope to make a couple of Vietnamese friends during my trip as well as talk to the expats here. I can tell that I am going to have a lot of fun during this trip I’m excited for what’s to come.

If there’s anything I’ve learned this past week during my class in Vietnamese history and culture is that Vietnam is both a culturally rich and aesthetically captivating country. The most interesting thing that I learned about the Vietnamese culture is how important the concept of ‘saving face’ is. In his article “Saving Face and Losing Face: How the Concept of Face Will Affect Your Travels in Asia” Greg Rodgers describes face as a combination of social standing, reputation, influence, dignity, and honor. Causing someone to lose face lowers them in the eyes of their peers. Saving face or “building face” raises their self-worth—obviously a better outcome for everyone. This is a crucial part of Asian etiquette. As someone who grew up in America around western social norms the way we act in the U.S with others is often with brutal honesty and a get-right-to-the-point attitude which is strikingly different than in Asia with their eastern social norms. The Vietnamese value relationships above all and will often make small talk before business in order to build respect and personal trust. However we are not all that different as we do share cultural similarities with Vietnam in our economic system.

Capitalism is alive in well in Vietnam. With two-thirds of the Vietnamese population born after the fall of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and the reunification of Vietnam in 1975 the young people in the south embody a spirit of optimism and innovation. The Vietnam economic reforms of 1986 called Đổi Mới created a “socialist-oriented market economy” which helped deliver an average of 7 percent annual growth in GDP over the past decade. The future is bright in Vietnam with the country finally at peace after many centuries of wars, occupation, and entanglements with foreign armies. Part of their recent economic success might be due to the Vietnamese values.

Compared to the U.S the Vietnamese culture is strongly group-oriented where individual preferences are considered far less relevant than group harmony and synergy. Contrastingly, in the U.S we value individualism and independence which is often the goal for many American parents when it comes to their children’s upbringing and future. These cultural difference may have an impact on my professional experience during my internship this summer in Siagon. In the U.S there is pressure on individual performance and what we can each can bring to the table that’s unique and different than anybody else. However since I’ll be working in Vietnam I’m assuming what will matter in the workplace is not how I perform personally but rather how I can work with my team to produce quality work for the good of the company whether that be contributing to ideas or completing group tasks. This may also influence my personal experience because I’m going to need to get good at decoding feedback on my work and determine whether it’s either good or bad because saving face is going to be very important to my coworkers and supervisors. In the U.S it’s not difficult to receive constructive criticism from your higher-ups but in Vietnam they’ll probably dance around delivering criticism. However with that being said I’m excited for what the future holds and can’t wait to experience Vietnamese culture and history. Hẹn gặp lại!