Uncategorized – Page 3 – UF in Vietnam Internship

Job Autonomy

In my time working at Impact Vietnam, I have accomplished several tasks but certainly not without adversity. Impact Vietnam specializes in providing investment advisory and financial services to private companies, and because of this gathering information about them provides a new set of challenges as opposed to public companies. When a company is listed public, the company has a responsibility to release periodic public reports and information about the company for their investors. Although, since Impact Vietnam works primarily with private companies, the information available is often times very limited or simply unavailable. A large portion of my responsibilities at Impact Vietnam revolve around preparing investment presentations and financial models for prospective investors, so when the only method of gathering information is directly from the client, it makes the process significantly more challenging. Several times I find myself unable to complete a presentation because I simply don’t have sufficient information, and thus resulting in inefficiencies as I wait for the client to respond to my information inquiries. Although it is inconvenient, I consider it a part of the process in doing investment advisory in Vietnam and find that the end result is a tailored presentation that answers all the questions that I have gathered throughout the process.

My experience with Impact Vietnam has been very exciting for several different reasons. One of which is the amount of responsibility I have in the investment advisory process. I’m very grateful to be working with a smaller firm because I believe that in doing so, I’m given so much more autonomy with my work than I would have had otherwise. It has also surprised me to learn how much trust my team has in me, and because of it I feel motivated to continually improve my output as I see how much value it brings to the firm. Another benefit I’ve experienced in working with Impact Vietnam is the absence of hierarchical boundaries. Before coming to Vietnam, I was warned that there might be a strong presence of hierarchy within the workplace and to expect to have little influence on internal processes. To my surprise, as an intern I’m treated as a full-time analyst and included in team meetings, client meetings, and in client facility visits. I’m also encouraged to share my perspective and provide feedback on the way the firm operates. The amount of respect my team has in me is a pleasant surprise that I would never have expected to come from an internship.

Outside of work, I enjoy venturing around the city and exploring new foods to indulge in. The food in Vietnam has influences from around the world, but what I have enjoyed the most is the Vietnamese Pizza, also known as Banh Trang Nuong. I have explored the busy streets of Ho Chi Minh City to try the best restaurants and street vendors I could find, and no foods have been able to surpass the delicate Vietnamese Pizza. Available nearly on every corner of Ho Chi Minh City, culinary artists put together a mixture of minced pork and pork floss doused in chili sauce and scrambled quail egg, sprinkled with baby shrimps and chopped scallions all on top of rice paper brushed with butter. I will certainly be missing Vietnamese Pizza when I return to the United States in the coming weeks, but until then I will treat myself to the delicious dish.

Bittersweet Homecoming

Throughout my internship, I feel that I have done a good job of doing what I have been told to do. I have turned unintelligible English into cohesive sentences, edited our websites, done research, and edited PowerPoints all as I was directed to. I think one way I can improve my performance in the future is to look for more work when I run out. It is easy to plan weekend trips, talk to friends, or otherwise goof off at work when you run out of work. If I had went and found more work, I could have gotten even more out of my already enriching experience. Another aspect I need to work on is my communication. There were multiple times that I thought I knew what needed to be done but had to redo it because of a lack of communication. I need to take it upon myself to clarify and ask more questions, so I know what I am supposed to do and how I am supposed to do it. In conjunction with this, I think my communication with my coworkers just as friends need to improve as well. Since I had a group of people that I came with, I tended to stick with them instead of trying to make plans with the people at my work. In the future, I need to be better about this and expand my friend network more, not just my professional network.

I would say my experience in Vietnam has greatly changed my outlook on life, as well as helping me to grow as a person tremendously. In relation to my professional development, I believe that this experience has increased my understanding of a different type of office culture, as well as a different country’s business culture in general. Learning the nuances of Vietnamese business culture makes me a more marketable candidate for a job. In relation to my career aspirations, I would say this experience has made me completely unsure as to what I want to do anymore. I don’t mean this as a bad thing really, but I now feel uncertain as to what I want to do out of college. I am probably just going to wing it and hope I enjoy the first job I end up doing. As a person, I think my time here has made me into someone who isn’t afraid to do something at the drop of a hat anymore. I used to really like to stick to a plan when doing something (I blame my mother for this since she was too organized), but I am content with going with the flow more now.

Overall, I think my main takeaways are: new friends, newfound appreciation for the place I live, a newfound appreciation of Vietnam and Asia in general, a knowledge of business culture in Vietnam, and many unforgettable memories. Vietnam will always hold a special place in my heart, and I am glad that I am able to say, “back in ‘Nam” now too.

Time is running out and I am feeling yellow

As it stands now, I only have 1 more full week of work ahead of me, and then I am done. As I reflect on my time at Pulse Active, I would say that my best moment here would have to be the Color Me Run. Although it was on a Saturday, it was an absolutely awesome experience, and it gave me a whole new perspective on festivals, since I have now worked one. Getting to be a part of marketing this event, which sold out very quickly, and being able to make the experience even more enjoyable for those who attended was extremely rewarding. Part of my duties at the event was to throw food coloring powder at people, turning the white shirts everyone wore into a puke yellow. I myself even got completely covered in it; I have attached a picture below of the aftermath. Being able to experience my first Color Me Run as an organizer was a great experience, one that I will never forget.

Throughout my previous journals, I have spoken about what my priorities at work are. I am in charge of writing and editing all of the English for the company, but I also have been tasked with updating our website and using WordPress from time to time. I would say that my best accomplishments were that I maintained and updated 3 websites, I edited and proofread countless articles, press releases, and marketing efforts, and probably the most important is that I lived and worked in a foreign country for over 2 months. I think that my WordPress experience will be especially beneficial in the future since so much of marketing, my intended career path, is focused online.

Living and working in a country where you do not speak the language is not easy. The biggest way that I will live after this experience is that I will have a much greater appreciation for my situation, what I have, and I will be able to see from the perspective of others easier. I also will never take air conditioning for granted again, nor free water at restaurants. I will take away an appreciation for Vietnam, Vietnamese culture, and especially Vietnamese food when I leave this place. As cliché as it sounds, a piece of my heart will remain in Vietnam forever, and I will look fondly upon the times I had here. I hope to one day return to Asia to work, maybe even here. I will be back for travel, no doubt; I will hopefully be able to afford nicer accommodations than the budget hostels I sleep in on weekend trips now.

Sunday Fundays

During my internship, I have learned a lot about the sports and event industries in Vietnam. Sports, especially running events as well as events like triathlons, are relatively new to Vietnamese people. A lot of manpower goes into educating and informing the public about these events, and it is a rapidly growing industry. Pulse Active sold 12000 tickets for our annual Color Me Run with in 1 week. We completely sold out their event in a week, which I was told set a record of some sort. In the entertainment event industry, the competition is definitely heating up faster than in sports. More and more artists are looking to expand overseas, and Vietnam as a growing country is becoming the center of attention. At our Color Me Run a couple of weeks ago we hosted Maggie Lindemann, who is apparently an American who is very popular in Europe. Entertainers are looking to Vietnam to expand their brands, and brands are being created to host these people.

If I were to perform a SWOT analysis on our company, I would say that our biggest strength would be that we are leading the industry, because it is so new at this point. We must continue to maintain market share. The industry continues to grow, and I believe that this presents a threat to us. We must constantly adapt to the environment and to the people in order to stay one step ahead. A weakness that we have would be that we do not have enough community engagement as a company. Our different events all get good participation, and they are constantly growing; however, I don’t believe that we capitalize on our position as organizers enough. We need to connect more with the community as a company, because no one knows us. They may know of our events, but they still don’t know who we are. An opportunity that we have is that we can easily expand into other types of events if we want to, simply because we have the experience and the pedigree to convince others to work with us over another newer company.

A wild moment in my HCMC life would have to be last week, when a bunch of us went to the Heineken tour. It was Sunday, and I had worked on Saturday for the Color Me Run. I was ready to relax, so some friends and I headed down to District 1 to a rooftop bar to sit and have a drink. We went, had a great time, and then decided to take a quick grab over to the Heineken Tower for a tour. We had a great time on the tour, got to see an absolutely stunning view, and had a great time with friends all at the same time. It was definitely a Sunday funday!

They had us in the first half, I’m not gonna lie

I think the most challenging aspect is the artistic freedom I am given. This is also probably the biggest opportunity for me to grow. I am given a topic and told to write an article on it. In the beginning, I was only tasked with adapting articles that had been translated from Vietnamese. Now, I have written my own articles for our website and written articles for other websites as well. I have performed my own research, written articles and made presentations from said research, and then have posted them to our website or sent them off to other websites. I have been able to improve my writing skills simply by practicing. Unfortunately, I am the only native English speaker in the marketing department, so my work largely goes unchecked, but I know that practice will be beneficial in the long run.

I think the best features of my internship have been the freedom I have, and the environment I am in. The freedom I have explained above, but I also enjoy the atmosphere of my work a lot. We sit at open tables, no assigned seats, and everyone puts headphones in while they do their work. This doesn’t mean the office is quiet, however. Between departments collaborating with each other and the construction going on downstairs, there is always a buzz. This was not really what I expected it to be like. In my previous 3 office jobs, none of them have had a seating arrangement like this. 2 of my jobs had cubicles filling a big room; at the third job I had my own office. I wouldn’t say my current seating arrangement is better than having my own office, but it is far and away better than cubicles.

The best food I have eaten so far in HCMC is around a 4-minute walk from my work. When I realized that my time in Vietnam was getting shorter and shorter, I decided to scour TripAdivsor for the best Vietnamese food around me. I found a super delicious place called cycloresto, and had one of if not the best Vietnamese meal I have had here. There was pork with pumpkin batter, bok choy soup, vegetables with a Mekong Delta sauce, and fish, which was beautifully cooked, with some mystery sauce. Overall, it was a great meal, and I have attached a picture below.

Goodbye Vietnam

Overall, I have had a fantastic experience in this internship program. My job as a business analyst with Elefos really helped me learn and grow as a young adult who will soon be entering the workforce. I am very happy with what I have been able to contribute in the internship and hope that my supervisor feels the same way. I have helped to identify new markets for the company, researched these new markets in depth, and have created pitch decks for product offerings in these sectors. While I am very happy with my performance, there are always still areas that can be improved. One of these areas for me is finding things to do at work when there is free time. I had plenty of work given to me by my supervisor, but the hardest part of the internship was finding more work to do after completing a given assignment. I feel like I have really grown in this area over the summer, but still have some distance to go to better utilize all of my time.

This experience has helped to show me that I can be comfortable in a foreign work setting, and in a country in which I do not speak the language. I love travelling and exploring new cultures, and this program was a perfect way to do both. I am very excited to see where I am able to work in the future and hope that my work can also mix with travelling and seeing more of Asia. I have also gained valuable experience putting my business knowledge to the test and learning how to tackle different assignments. Part of the reason this internship was so great was because of how much I have been able to learn about areas such as accounting and finance.

I would recommend this program to anyone who wants to gain work experience in a setting different from the norm. Working in a foreign setting really opens your eyes to how business is done differently around the world and helps to create global connections that can be valuable in the future. I am very happy I made the decision to participate in this internship program and know I will never forget the experiences I have had while in Vietnam.

Learning and Growing

Throughout this internship program I have both learned and contributed a lot. It is fantastic to gain knowledge on a new industry, and to learn business skills in general, but it is more rewarding to see my work helping my host company. There have been moments this summer where I have felt like what I have to offer has really been helpful. One example of this is when I discovered a new model for an industry that my company has been exploring. I was able to successfully meet with my boss, and clearly explain this new model, and have gained many more assignments because of this. I came on this internship program to better my professional career, and a large part of this is bettering the company in which I am working.

Professionally, I feel like I have experienced a lot of growth. This has been my first time working a full-time job. I was a little worried that working so many hours would be a shock for me, but I have not found this to be the case. One thing that I have learned is that keeping myself busy and engaged at work is very easy in an environment that is unique. Daily life in Vietnam is very different from what I am used to, and this has made work very enjoyable. I have also vastly increased my accounting knowledge through buy-side equity research. It is almost like a puzzle to both learn and work at the same time to produce the best job results. This new knowledge has both helped my work, and myself personally.

Living and working in Ho Chi Minh City has opened my eyes to the importance of cultural knowledge when working overseas. From talking with one of the founders of my company, I have learned that doing business is very different among different countries in Southeast Asia, and also even different in different areas within Vietnam. This cultural knowledge is not necessarily something that can be learned in a book but is still vital in the business world. First-hand experience seems to be the only way to gain this knowledge, and it is interesting to talk a native of Vietnam who learned first-hand.

Blockchain is the Future

Throughout this internship I have vastly increased my knowledge of blockchain. Before the internship, I viewed blockchain as simply the technology behind Bitcoin, but have come to learn that it is so much more. Blockchain really is the future and has endless opportunities. For any information that is stored electronically, blockchain can be used as a storage method that decentralizes this information, ultimately making it harder to hack or alter. The most obvious application for this is in the banking world, where real money is stored electronically, and security of this information is of the upmost importance.

Elefos’ biggest strength is that they are the fastest blockchain in Vietnam, capable of handling nearly 6,000 transactions per second. This means that Elefos can potentially add more partners and hold more transactions in their database than any other Vietnamese blockchain company. Despite this strength, Elefos is still a relatively small company, and faces challenges to grow quickly, and gain revenues and investments to keep the company running. On the flip side, being a startup and a smaller company allows Elefos to explore many avenues and are not stuck doing one thing. They can follow new opportunities, and pivot at any moment with less worry than that of a larger company. Their biggest competitors however are the larger Blockchain companies in Vietnam that have a significantly larger footprints, and marketing fronts. They also face competition from larger international blockchain companies aiming to enter into Asia and specifically Vietnam. Blockchain seems to be at a point in its growth where companies are racing to be the best and gain traction, so this point in time is very crucial for Elefos.

The most amazing part of living in Ho Chi Minh City has been the ability to travel to so many unique areas during my off weekends. There are so many beautiful cities such as Mui Ne, Da Lat, Nha Trang, etc. that are very close and easily accessible from Ho Chi Minh City. It has been amazing to be able to explore the country even with very limited free time, and to really gain an understanding of what Vietnam has to offer. Vietnam is more beautiful that I could have ever imagined.

Banh Mi Me

The best feature of my internship has been the ability to work alongside some very bright minds. Many of my superiors and coworkers are very qualified individuals, who have become masters in their fields. They all grew up outside of the United States, and this has resulted in different ways of viewing the world, and challenges. One of the best parts of working with such incredible people, is the ability to learn from them. One example is that my knowledge in technology has grown exponentially during this trip through learning from the programmers at the office. I believe surrounding yourself with educated and motivated people is very important for someone who is beginning to enter the workforce such as myself.

On the flip side, one of the most challenging aspects of the job has been time management. In school, everything has had a deadline, and normally very clear instructions. In my workplace, I have not found this to be the case. My assignments are normally a little bit broad, and there is no talk about when the assignment should be completed. The most difficult part of this is knowing when it is time to turn in an assignment, and when it is time to continue working on it. I feel like this process has helped me to feel comfortable in an unstructured environment, and I am very thankful for this experience.

Turning to the cuisine in Vietnam and specifically Ho Chi Minh City, I have found the food to be one of the best parts about the trip. Vietnam is a sort of melting pot of all different types of Asian cuisines, with everything from duck feet to sushi. There are so many people living in the city from different areas of the world, and this diverse population is reflected in the food. As far as Vietnamese food, my favorite dish has been the Banh Mi. Banh Mi is a versatile sandwich often with vegetables, sauces, and meats. The Banh Mi is a common street food, and very inexpensive, yet is still quite filling. I hope to be able to find a good place to get Banh Mi upon my return to the United States!

A new outlook on tomorrow and the future

As my internship comes to a close and I reflect back on what I have learned I feel a sense of accomplishment and encouragement to continue to seek out more experiences like this one. One task that my supervisor assigned me was a market analysis for the German market. Our company is expanding its recruitment efforts to Germany and because I speak German and know the country my supervisor wanted me to analyze our possibilities in the market. Something that I struggled with during this assignment was time management because it was such an open-ended task, with little direct instruction. It was hard for me at first to manage my time correctly and find relevant information.

This internship allowed me to work on this weakness and develop a system where I plan out my days and what I want to accomplish in that day. This system is something I am going to apply not only to future jobs but to my life as a student as well. This internship also helped me realize the kind of work environment I want to work in as I begin to look for more long-term positions. My coworkers all work together to help build each other up and be successful in their designated roles, and taught me importance of a positive, healthy work environment. I also learned what it is like to work for a company that supports its employees’ goals and ambitions. My supervisor asked the company if she could start a branch in Ho Chi Minh, she presented them with the facts, and they supported her throughout the whole process. This is a type of company I hope to work for. This internship has given me a whole new perspective in terms of career goals and has motivated me to work harder for a job that I am passionate about instead of just pursuing a degree for the sake of a degree.

Another important part of this internship was the actual culture experience, and when it comes to the Vietnamese culture there is nothing like it. In the past two months, I have been able to travel throughout the whole country and it is fascinating how different the culture is compared in the North, Central and South. Before I came to Vietnam, many people told me about how friendly the Vietnamese people were, and I found this statement to be very true. Often times we would stay in hostels and I would ask a simple question, “what is there to do around here?” and I would be bombarded with a huge list of things, or I would be referred to a friend who knew how to get here or there and so on. I hope everyone gets an opportunity to live and work abroad and I encourage anybody who has to chance to take it because these past few months have changed my whole outlook on the future.