Uncategorized – Page 6 – UF in Vietnam Internship

Accomplishments and new challenges

This internship has taught me a lot and allowed me to have a lot of design opportunities that I have not previously experienced in my school life. Through working with Scazma, I have been able to design a variety of things with a focus on interior aspects. Having this internship taught me that interior design and architecture go hand in hand, and many architects do both.

My favorite design that I have created happened in the first couple weeks of my internship. I was able to be in charge of designing the shelves of the reception desk in the Cosmos hotel. This beachside hotel in Phu Quoc will always hold a special place in my heart as one of the first real world design projects that I have been exposed to. I struggled with and enjoyed learning and working alongside my coworkers during this project. The shelves that I made were the first thing that I was able to see go through a presentation and be accepted. The sense of accomplishment that I felt when I heard that my boss and the rest of the office liked my idea was worth the effort of learning how to use Sketchup and AutoCad. I believe this is one of my most proud moments.

During my stay, I have had many proud and not-so-proud moments. I have been able to learn from my mistakes in a variety of ways. These moments have helped me learn a lot about a workplace and myself, and this has made me proud of myself. I have gained valuable skills in areas that I have not had much experience in, and that is one of the most valuable things that I can take away from this internship. One of my favorite parts of working with Scazma has to be that I was in a completely foreign environment where I would feel more comfortable making mistakes and learning from them.

Ho Chi Minh has let me embrace my discomfort in the workplace and role with it. The city has changed the way I view the world in the best way. Since living in such a large city, I was able to fully comprehend how much more is out there in the world. Living in a small city and Gainesville has blocked out a lot of excitement and liveliness from my life. Experiencing Ho Chi Minh has allowed me to see that I enjoy the bustle of a city, especially one in a completely different place than I am used to. Ho Chi Minh will always be special to me for showing me the environment that I eventually want to live in.

New ideas and new friends

My time with Scazma has taught me a lot about the design industry. I have been able to learn more about some of the tasks that go into designing a hotel, and it has been very interesting to see how everything relates and builds up into a full concept. Most of what I have been able to observe are the beginning and middle stages of design in the AWAY Hotel in Hoi An and the final design stage in the COSMOS Hotel in Phu Quoc.

In my opinion, it is more interesting and exciting to observe the hotel design process in the beginning stages because it is very easy to propose new ideas and experiment with different options in terms of room, corridor, lighting, garden, and decorative designs. It is easy to observe someone’s creative side and see what kind of ideas my coworkers have during this stage of development. Seeing how people think differently is a fun and informative way to learn about how to work in a collaborative environment. The ability to collaborate on ideas is a vitally important skill for an architecture and design firm, so communication is key.

My office is a very close-knit community, but there are times when communication on a project could be improved. This causes some people to work on the same task without knowing. One way that the Scazma team is able to combat this issue is through being open. It was very refreshing to see that the office realized this problem and worked directly to combat it through our weekly meetings. I enjoy these because they allow us to stay on task and never wonder what our job is. Having these meetings allows the team to work efficiently and happily with transparency of responsibilities. My coworkers and I get along very well and it allows me to feel at home in the office. I enjoy the opportunity to make friends with my colleagues, which is a huge priority for me in a workspace.

I have had the opportunity to become closer with one of the other interns in my office. Earlier this week we even went ice skating at the nearby mall after work! This was a pretty unforgettable moment for me. I was able to introduce to him to some of my friends who are also in the internship program at UF and other schools. It is always super fun to mix cultures and see people from all over the world interact together. We all had a lot of fun at a traditional Vietnamese food place, and then hit the ice to cool down after a long day on the job.

A little taste

Working at SCAZMA has taught me a lot about the field of design and all that goes into a project. It has been a very stressful and rewarding experience that I am very thankful for. I am able to design and experiment with real results, and it feels good to have my ideas considered and in some cases used in the hotel plans.

The biggest challenge that I have experienced while working at SCAZMA is also the best part about it. Having the freedom to experiment and design is very stressful and exciting at the same time since I am so new to this area of study. My education at UF so far has been very abstract, so applying what I know to the real world has been more difficult than I originally expected. Sometimes I feel as though I am in over my head, but this is not a bad thing because it means that I will be able to grow from this experience.

For these next couple of weeks, my task is to design a lighting plan for the AWAY hotel. I am inexperienced with this job, but I am working on it with all of my passion, as the SCAZMA team would say. It helps that I have a supportive and friendly staff that works alongside me. I was able to bond with my coworkers this week through attending a lighting expo in order to learn my about my current role in the design process and through a heartfelt going away party for one of the coworkers that made an effort to make me feel welcome on the first day. Having these experiences allows me to gain confidence and comfort in the company, which is also achieved through our daily group lunches.

The food is always very good, but the real star of the show is the tea. It tastes amazing and I believe that I may have a bit of an addiction to it. It also helps that it is blissfully free, a rarity in Ho Chi Minh. I have also found that I am in love with watermelon drinks in Vietnam. They are always super fresh and delicious with a taste that is truly unmatched in the United States. Food is vitally important to the Vietnamese culture, so I have had a chance to try countless dishes. I have yet to find my favorite, but I love experimenting! Some of my favorite adventurous choices include spiny fish, eel fish, and even frog! My next goal is to eat a snail, and I refuse to leave without at least a taste.

Farewell, Vietnam (and Investment Banking)

As I reflect on my time as an investment banking intern at Impact Vietnam, I can say with certainty that both my technical skills and my understanding of the industry have improved immensely. While much of this can be attributed to having a fantastic mentor in Tuan, who was only recently in my shoes, my improvement is largely the result of a combination of being tasked legitimate assignments with significant responsibility and having freedom in leading my own projects that allowed for my creativity to flow with ease. When I dig into the specifics of my performance over the past two months, I would say my strongest area of success revolved around my resiliency and adaptability. Working in the finance industry in a foreign country like Vietnam that harbors fast-paced economic growth and organic business structures, being prepared for shifts in daily tasks or unexpected projects are far from uncommon, and I was tested many times in being dumped with last minute investment teasers expected to be completed within 48 hours, and changes in investment presentations in cases where we lost mandates. Additionally, I had to develop the flexibility to put in extra effort to find relevant information for investment presentations, as often times the information I needed was in Vietnamese and unable to be translated via Google. Achieving success in both of these specific areas was certainly fulfilling but understanding where I struggled the most throughout the summer will provide the initial foundation for future improvement in my professional performance in any setting. I believe the areas where I can benefit the most from future improvement would be my professional confidence and communication. Rather than doubting my ability to complete tasks as I often do, I should express my concern with my superiors which will not only boost my confidence but foster two-way communication for any questions I have on projects as opposed to forcibly trying to figure out complex issues without any help.

This experience immensely developed my technical skills in the Microsoft Office platform, my ability to work with others creativity skills. Working in Vietnam has allowed me to realize that, while the work was great for my own development, investment banking is not the career path I want to take, as I have learned to appreciate far more mobile work with greater people oriented interactions that one may find in management consulting. In conclusion, working in Saigon has not only been a culturally enriching and enlightening experience, but has allowed me to understand business and individual priorities in Vietnam from a global scale.

A long way from CTRL+C/CTRL+V

Entering the financial sector as an intern in Vietnam has proven to be one of the most rewarding work experiences imaginable. Studying as a finance student at the University of Florida, despite having only completed my first year on campus, provided the foundation to be successful as an expatriate in my position in Vietnamese investment banking. While I can think of certain times that I have felt proud of myself during my internship, it is difficult to pinpoint a single memory or moment as the most fulfilling. I would have to say that the proudest I have been of myself has been times when I reflect on where I was only eight weeks ago, and just how far my technical skills in Microsoft Office, especially PowerPoint, have come.

As an investment analyst, I am expected to be highly skilled in Excel and PowerPoint as they are the foundation for creating financial models and building out pitch decks for investor presentations, respectively. In all honesty, while I knew I had room to grow in Excel (and still do; I want to master keyboard shortcuts), I truly thought I was well trained in PowerPoint. I had worked in the program for the majority of my life and was the source of nearly of my prior presentations, but until I bore the burden of expectation to assemble a presentation for investors upon which the weight of a $100 million deal sat, I had never pushed my creative limits beyond what I had believed was its fully expanded frontier. I abandoned bland simplicity of my work for more geometrically aesthetic style, engineering slides to project information in a fashion to effectively captivate pivotal investors. When reflecting on my work before being tasked with this gargantuan beast-of-a-project halfway through Week 6, I fed myself the same notion: that I was making headway in my skills. And I was; just not to the exponential extent I saw until the completion of this project. In fact, my proudest “moment” and largest accomplishment coincide; my skills were catalyzed to a point of elite professionalism by the expectation to spearhead a legitimate, multi-million-dollar investment deal.

The way I now look at life after two months of living in Ho Chi Minh City has been altered by the workplace I operate within. Researching local companies seeking foreign investment, as well as studying the firm I am working in, I have come to realize the opportunity an individual has the power to create for themselves. My boss and the founder of Impact Vietnam, along with hundreds of others living in Ho Chi Minh City, have created successful companies despite having little resources simply because they embodied the necessary tenacity. As I reflect on the education I am pursuing coupled with the credentials I have accumulated through experience, I now truly believe I could successfully create an investment firm or consumer-based company in the near future; I simply need to find the courage to do so.

Hard Work Trumps Size when Size Fails to Work Hard

Working in investment banking has granted me numerous valuable lessons and information to take away from my experience. I have come to highly value the importance of working ahead and forging your own opportunities when lacking direction in the office, as it has allowed me to develop an independence that is absent from nearly all American entry-level corporate office positions and will allow for swift upward mobility as I begin my career. holding yourself to unwavering quality standard even when it might not be expected by your superiors. I have also learned that, unlike traditional Wall Street practice, when a Vietnamese investment bank secures an investment mandate from a company, granting them the rights as the intermediary to sell their business to investors, they are not the only bank that has been given this conventionally exclusive privilege. This means that Vietnamese investment banks secure as many deals as possible in the event that they are not the bank investors choose to buy through. This has proven to be quite frustrating at times as analysts are given a much higher volume of projects due to banks targeting high turnover, and I have seen my hard work deleted simply because investors chose to buy through a different firm. Yet it has proven to be quite rewarding when investors finalize a deal with a small firm like ourselves over firms with historically larger amounts raised capital because of a presentation my co-worker and I spearheaded.

During my time at Impact Vietnam I have been able to analyze the positive and negative aspects of our company and have compiled them into a SWOT analysis for better understanding the company. Our strengths our centralized around a tightly knit team with strong personal and professional relationships, high efficiency in securing mandates, fast turnaround in developing investment teasers, and creating engaging visual PowerPoint investment presentations that give Impact Vietnam a leg-up over large competitors. Our weaknesses are defined by the very small number of company employees which results in work overload on the few team members, relatively low deal capital – under $1 billion – indicates lack of size and long-term industry experience. Opportunities include the room for growth in employee headcount and deal size; in addition, many secured mandates indicate probable, continued short-term investment business, and foreign investors likely to return for future deals and high Vietnamese market GDP growth nearing 7% is enticing enough to attract overseas investment groups in the future. Looming threats to be considered are larger investment banks taking domestic business from Impact Vietnam alongside possibility of losing foreign investment to rival firms.

While living in Ho Chi Minh City, I have had many amazing experiences and interacted with numerous accomplished people. One of these shared moments came at a United States Chamber of Commerce networking event at a bar in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. After talking with a few ex-patriates about their lives and careers abroad from their home countries and the opportunities they have discovered or created for themselves in Vietnam, our group of UF students who attended the networking event was invited to a post-networking party at the penthouse of an expat who a few students had talked to earlier in the night, and who also happened to be a German businessman and Hanoi’s largest nightclub owner. After a spectacularly lavish evening of conversation and billiards, I can truly say this was my greatest out-of-office experience in Vietnam.

A Corporate Roller coaster of Unpredictability

Along my journey into the Vietnamese world of business and finance, I can honestly say that I have endured a rollercoaster-like experience filled with ups, downs, and unexpected turns. In some instances, I feel to lack direction in the work I am doing, which I know is derived from the comfort I, and most all Americans, find in the rigid structure of Western corporate culture that has been hard-coded into our brains at the earliest ages. Nonetheless, it was difficult to operate when my supervisor had left Ho Chi Minh City on a business trip to Hanoi for the week, leaving myself and my co-intern Richard alone in the office with little instruction on expectations for projects, priorities, or deadlines. If merely hoping to be assigned a specific project was not enough to ask for, searching for information has been an entire project in itself, because not only do Richard and I need to wait to request the confidential financial information from our client, but we are unable to access any data on industry competitors, as they are almost always private corporations which do not make their financials public information. Even in such profound frustration, the silver lining, which may seldom seem visible often times, lies in the creativity granted in the absence of structure.

In many cases, I have assembled pitch deck presentations for foreign investors in fashions I see suitable because I have been given significant responsibility and flexibility to allow my originality to flourish on work that was wholly mine. I have been lucky enough to have sat in on meetings with international investors, as well as visit clients and CEOs of domestic businesses looking to sell ownership or the entire company. Interacting with individuals who have forged success in an international, high-growth market like Vietnam have been a source of inspiration to my future self and continue to fuel my hopes of investing in the region in the future per its unparalleled opportunity for economic growth. As I continue to struggle at times working in an organic business atmosphere, I know I am diversifying my workplace acumen and developing the adaptability necessary for my future ventures into Southeast Asian economies.

During my remaining few weeks in Saigon I hope to continue eating my favorite newly discovered Vietnamese dish, Banh Mi, which is a mix of meat, cucumbers, cilantro, pickled carrots, and other vegetables on a traditional French baguette, along with using my challenging experiences to better develop myself for future opportunities in finance and long-term foreign investment.

Tan biet Saigon

I can’t believe that these 8 weeks have come to end. I have learned more about myself during this short time than I have ever had in my life. To begin, as an intern at Colliers International, I learned that I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn. Most of the work I was assigned was foreign to me, so it was very challenging at time. I was always very professional and tried to work in a timely manner, but I wish I would have asked more questions when I got assigned a task. After doing a couple of presentations and receiving feedback from my advisor, I have room for improvement on the creation of charts/ tables and the sophistication of my reports. As a result, moving on, I will take some online courses and try to get more practice to improve on these qualities.

Before starting at Colliers, I wasn’t really sure whether real estate was what I wanted my career to be in the future but after this summer, I can say with certainty that I love the industry. Having the chance to work with different teams within the company, I was able to see the multitude of opportunities that exist in the field and narrow down which jobs I like. Now I know that although working with the marketing team was great, I still don’t think I have the creative mind needed for the job. However, doing a part of the quarterly report and research on a commercial building taught me that I’m really passionate about analytics. As a result, I am more interested in evaluation and investment jobs.

A key takeaway from this experience is to never plan too much ahead of time because things will never go the way you plan them. Here my plans seemed to change almost every day and although at first, I didn’t like that, I later started to understand that if everything was always planned out and I knew what was going to happen every second of the day, then life would be boring because I would never have anything to look forward to. Another key takeaway is that HCMC has a significant presence of multinational life around the city as well as in its businesses. Working in my company I got to talk to people from all around the world and really understood that we are all more similar then we think. This is an important takeaway because it taught me that fear of the unknown is just in our minds and we should always strive to get out of our comfort zones.

A new perspective

Thus far, my proudest moment in my internship has been presenting my competitive shopping findings to my supervisor and the residential team. I’m proud of this moment because from the information I gathered from the competitors, now the residential team knows what is out in the market and can adjust their methods and procedures to offer the best customer experience to their clients. After presenting, I immediately saw this happening when the head of the residential team took out all the leasing contracts/agreements and asked me if I could help and look over them. Now that the team has finished looking through the contracts, they are starting to look through all the option list examples I gave them so that they can come up with a template that works best for the type of customers they get.

My biggest professional accomplishment in the internship has been all of the research I have done because I have learned a lot from it. Every Tuesday, we always have a meeting with the CEO, and I have felt accomplished a couple of times when the team has presented research I have done, and the CEO has liked it. An example of this is the comparable research I did at the beginning of the internship. The information that I gathered was used to help shape templates for the companies new marketing campaign that was launch 2 weeks ago.

After living and working in Ho Chi Minh City for almost two months, I can say that I don’t view life the same anymore. Living and working here has thought me to take risks and that fear is all part of the process. Even though at the beginning it can be daunting, most of the time you will end up with a great outcome since you’re forcing yourself out of your comfort zone. At work, I have learned this from presentations and from my co-workers. I went in with a mindset that I would say yes to everything and I am glad that I did. I can’t tell you how many delicious plates I would have missed on if I wouldn’t have made this promise before arriving in Saigon.

Accelerating Success

Before coming to Ho Chi Minh City, I did not know much about the real estate industry. Now, with no surprise, I can say I have learned more about the industry and what sector I want to work in after graduation. First, while doing the competitor shopping, I got to see and learn all the steps that are required to lease an apartment in this market. Second, I have also learned a little bit about contract writing and how to conduct detailed research. Third, in the marketing department as an intern, I have learned how to do comparables and search engine optimization. Lastly, I have really enjoyed this time because I have gotten to talk to many of my co-workers and have learned all about what their jobs entail. This has helped me because I have been able to narrow down the jobs that I want to pursue within the real estate world.

In a SWOT Analysis, I would say Colliers International strength is that the company has a great group of experts who are extremely detailed which has accelerated the client’s success. Although there are only about 50 employees in the company, Colliers weakness is communication amongst the departments. I believe that this is also an opportunity because each department head and HR personnel have already started working on a plan to improve the situation. So far, they have noticed that the departments have effective communication internally but struggle to keep the rest of the company informed. This is a struggle because sometimes a department is dealing with a client that another department has already worked with in the past and they don’t even know it. In order to fix this, HR has been working on updating guidelines and also creating a welcome packet for new employees that explains everything they need to know about each department. The company’s threat is its competitors and their marketing strategies because marketing is what makes or breaks the opportunity of attaining a prospect.

While living and working in HCMC, I have had many amazing moments, one that comes to mind is a networking event I attended this Wednesday. This event was a great opportunity because I got the chance to meet over 30 international CEO’s. The event was held at Deutsches Haus which is the same building I work at and the topics discussed were blockchain and how fin-tech will be changing the finance world and the Vietnamese market.