Uncategorized – Page 9 – UF in Vietnam Internship

Challenges and Chicken Wings

We’re over the hill, and barreling through the second half of our internships now. Things have definitely slowed down, at this point I’ve very comfortably settled into Vietnam. Still, challenges manage to present themselves. The greatest challenge and the greatest feature of the internship are actually one in the same – the independence. Our supervisor is present for us to ask questions to and receive new objectives from, and we have goals in mind as well as steps to accomplish them, but it’s certainly self-driven and studied. Regarding our most recent assignment, the equity research on a major company, much of the past week has been spent brushing up on accounting and learning financial modelling. A book I found on the subject, Investment Banking: Valuation, Leveraged Buyouts, and Mergers & Acquisitions, was recommended by my supervisor and has proven invaluable. But there’s still much to learn, and every new article or chapter I read brings up more questions and unknowns seemingly indefinitely. I’m taking an online course given by Harvard on EduX on financial modelling and data analysis, so that will also aid in the task at hand I feel. The freedom is also a major highlight of the internship, I really like being able to work from wherever and enjoy flexible hours. As long as the work gets done, the actual process is of our own design, but I haven’t really fully taken advantage of this so far – even in my free time, I’ve begun ordering food in and just working on classes or scheduling student organization meetings. It’s a relaxing environment, and though I’ve traditionally worked best under pressure, I’ve learned to pace myself and distribute the tasks at hand so that I’ve always got something to do but I’m never experiencing any crunch.

Revisiting the topic of lunch, I can’t say there isn’t much food I’ve eaten here that I hadn’t already tried in the United States – Gainesville is a surprisingly good location for Asian foodies – but the meal I expected to be most familiar is what ended up shocking me the most. I ordered KFC for lunch one day, and it was the most pleasant food surprise I’ve had in my time here. I remember driving back to Gainesville from South Florida with a friend, about a year back, and stopping at a rest stop for KFC. That was my first time eating it, and for whatever reason, I was so excited by the prospect of eating chicken out of a plastic bucket. When I bit into the chicken leg resting at the top of the heap, my reaction wasn’t even disappointment. I didn’t have any idea what kind of quality to expect, nor any past experiences with the brand to benchmark my experience. Only confusion washed over me. I couldn’t tell if it was bad, or good, or if it was even chicken. Dipping it in the “honey sauce” only exacerbated things, as it was recognizably not honey either. That memory lingered in my mind when I hit the “order” button on my Grab Food app, but upon digging in, I was amazed at just how good the chicken was over here. It tasted like chicken – better yet, it tasted like really good chicken. I’m trying to avoid making KFC my go-to, for the sake of my health, but it certainly is the first place my mind wanders.

One final unrelated thought: visiting Little Tokyo this last week was incredible, it has definitely become my favorite area in Ho Chi Minh City. While passing through, I saw this quaint and moody little bar next to an upscale pizza place, and I’ve decided when I celebrate my 21^st birthday next week, this will be the spot to do it.

The beginning of the end or the end of the beginning

After taking some time to evaluate my internship experience, I can honestly say that I am satisfied with my performance. Treating my internship as a real job is what I think allowed me to succeed in my position. I would always show my commitment, be early to work, and take on as many responsibilities as possible (even some that were outside of my comfort zone). I would try my best to always turn in my best work and sometimes found it necessary to continue working on projects after I clocked out. Striving to network with as many employees as possible was also important to me. This was not a simple task as English was not everyone’s first language in my office, but I am happy with my efforts that ultimately made my workplace feel more like home. Overall, I am proud of my dedication and ability to go the extra mile.

Something that has always been more challenging for me is asking for help. However, I believe that I improved this quality during my internship because I would push myself to ask as many questions as I needed to before starting my assignments. Although I learned so much about marketing during this experience, I now see how much room I still have to grow. One thing that I wish I would have done is taken more time to review marketing strategies and terms before my internship to be more prepared. An aspect of content marketing that I specifically need to work on is writing professional articles. I had to put in so much effort to make my article readable, clear, and ready to be published on my company’s website. I will make sure to improve my writing skills in the future through taking classes.

This experience has solidified my choice of pursuing a degree in marketing. Although I have not had that much marketing experience in the past, I can definitely see myself working in this field. I was also able to become accustomed to the office environment. Sitting and remaining focused for nine hours straight, five days a week is not an easy task for someone who always loves being active. I quickly became comfortable with this more time I spent in the office.

My key take aways are not to be afraid to ask questions and go with the flow. Asking questions permitted me to gain more skills and made me more confident in my professional abilities in general. Also, I learned how to be more spontaneous. Going on impulsive weekend trips to different countries with my friends created some of the best learning experiences. Traveling around a different country without any plans, phone service, or without any knowledge of the language was definitely a challenge, but it forced me to think on the spot and gain some street smarts.

This experience was one of the most significant highlights of my schooling career. I would see myself grow both personally and professionally on a weekly basis, and although this time is coming to an end, I am positive that I the lessons I learned will continue impacting me in the future.

Making Memories in HCMC

The most memorable moment of my internship was tabling and assisting my supervisors at the World Gaming Executive Summit in Barcelona. I truly felt like part of the company and that I was able to positively represent it at such an influential event. Being able to experience the extensive networking that was occurring between executives in the gaming/gambling industries was an impactful learning experience as it allowed me to understand the importance of forming connections in the business setting. I was also able to document the summit with photos and videos that will be used to create promotional materials shortly as well. In my opinion, it is exciting to think that I played a part in helping to spread the word about my company and that my work will be used to advertise it. This trip was unexpected, exciting, and allowed me to learn so much about event marketing while getting a glimpse into some of the differences between European and Asian business culture.

My most significant professional accomplishment in my internship was having my infographics published on social media. It would take days to search for the proper data online and then actually design and create the info graph. Because it was such a long process, it would be gratifying to finally see each of them online while increasing social media engagement and web traffic.

After spending two months living and working in Vietnam, I have acquired a deeper understanding of the importance of taking risks and agreeing to experience what is not expected. In the past, I would become uneasy if something was not planned thoroughly. After having a few unplanned encounters in HCMC that ended up being incredible experiences, I now know how crucial it is to take every opportunity to get outside of my comfort zone, even if I was not awaiting it. This is essentially what broadens your horizons and makes you a stronger individual overall. Although I used to believe that I was open-minded before this trip, I now realized that I still have a long way to go, but I am getting there one step at a time. For example, before I was not open to permanently living and working abroad one day, but today I am genuinely considering it. I also have more faith in myself because living in an Asian country without knowing the language is not easy, but I was able to accomplish just that.

Company SWOT

Spending five weeks working at my company and doing research regarding tech and blockchain has allowed me to understand that the IT industry is booming. At the moment, it has the highest growth potential out of all the sectors and it only continues to expand. There is some uncertainty surrounding the blockchain industry, and it will take time for it to become more accepted worldwide.

I believe that before conducting a proper SWOT analysis, I would have to spend a few months working for my company. What I have observed in these past few weeks, however, is that my company has many strengths that I am confident will take it far in the future. It is currently the number one dRNG company on the market with the fastest decentralized random number generation (one million random numbers per second). There are some competitors out there; however, they are in their beginning stages, and GINAR is by far ahead of all of them. I also noticed that another strength is a passionate staff that genuinely cares about the company’s progress. GINAR’s team is small, but everyone seems to be hardworking and have a great conviction. This was especially evident at the recent trade show we attended, where they were making considerable efforts to network with as many industry leaders as possible. Although the employees are great, it seems like there could be more team members onboard. In my opinion, a weakness would be understaffing. There is so much potential for the company, and having more team members would make it easier to attain goals and help it progress even faster. An opportunity stems from the changing views about blockchain technology. More and more people and companies are starting to view blockchain in a positive light and are beginning to understand the benefits of it. Because of this, an opportunity is an emerging desire of dRNG to make the iGaming industry safer and more transparent for both users and operators. I would say that a possible threat is emerging competitors. Although there are not very many similar companies on the market, this might change when dRNG becomes more popular.

An amazing moment that I have had in HCMC has been networking with a group of people that I met during dinner a few weeks ago. I personally love talking to anyone in Saigon, especially expats, because I adore hearing how and why they ended up working in Vietnam. It made me content to see how open they were to discuss their stories with me and we ended up having a very meaningful conversation together.

A non-techie in the blockchain industry

The most challenging aspect of my internship was gaining a profound understanding of blockchain technology and how it applies to my company. Before starting this internship, I did not have any experience working in the IT industry and had a minimal understanding of blockchain and dRNGs, which are the main aspects of my company. In order to succeed in my marketing position, I found it necessary to learn more about these complicated subjects. I read many articles and attended a blockchain training session in the office in order to gain a better understanding of them. Although I am still far from becoming a blockchain expert, it is definitely easier for me to create infographics and discuss the benefits of this technology with potential clients. Before arriving to Vietnam, I could not imagine myself working in the IT industry in the future. I believed that I would not be able to wrap my head around all of the techy topics in this field, which discouraged me from applying to a few internships. Now I understand that it is not necessary to completely comprehend these topics if you are on the marketing team and that only a general understanding will do. Because of this, I no longer feel intimidated of applying to internships in the IT field, which opens doors to many potential opportunities for me.

A positive feature of my internship is being able to collaborate with my co-worker. I was expecting to have to work independently for the majority of the day, but we actually get to work on similar tasks together and often help each other out. Another aspect that I enjoy is that I am given a wide range of assignments that keep me busy throughout the entire day, so I never find myself bored or uninterested. As someone who enjoys being creative, I was concerned that I would not be able to use this quality of mine in this internship, but I was wrong. I have been assigned many tasks in which I can use my creativity and digital imaging skills.

I discovered my favorite Vietnamese dish at the office. Every morning, all of the employees receive an email with a survey link to input their lunch selection for the day. A few weeks ago, I decided to be adventurous and select the pork-stuffed tofu dish as my lunch choice, even though I previously did not enjoy tofu. As the name suggests, this dish consists of fried tofu with pork on the inside, drenched with tomato sauce. It was absolutely delicious, and I am so glad that I tried something that I was expecting to absolutely hate.

Precious time

As the time goes on, I feel like the days change more rapidly. I realized that traveling on the weekends makes every minute precious. I’m already nostalgic of the first week, even though it feels like just yesterday.

My status on my work is quite superb. I learn so much about the legal sector, specifically Vietnamese Corporate Law, every day. Right now, I have just submitted two large projects for review. One project was a workshop template that I have been working on with the other intern, Mohamed. The official workshop will take place in July and we will both be in attendance, which I’m very excited about. Tonight, we have a small event regarding the workshop in which we meet the start-up companies who will be participating in the work shop. Furthermore, I am performing various small tasks while I was trying to finish my partnership project. For my partnership project I had to write three Memorandums of Understanding, draft emails, and draft partnership letters. Also, I find it a little amusing, but the company thinks that I’m good at graphic design, because I once used a very colorful PowerPoint Template. Now I’m designing the workshop presentation, parts of the website, etc. I believe, even with my very basic level of design skills and with my English skills I will be able to help the marketing of the firm by means of: cleaning up small English errors and by improving the website & other presentation graphics.

I think the best part of me being an international intern is the dynamic way of thinking that is involved between myself and the rest of the employees. I learn so much about the co-workers and their culture from their actions, mannerisms, and work etiquette. I personally would say a strength of mine is my people skills, which is a useful skill when working with foreign clients. On the other hand, I would say a strength of most of my co-workers is an un-nerving work ethic. My fellow co-workers are beyond driven, young, and put great time into their work, which I can even notice as an outsider. Something I’ve learned while being in Ho Chi Minh City is that growing up is not as great as it seems. Working an 8-5:30 job, though is great experience, gives retrospect to what life will be like outside of college. To be quite frank it is quite exhausting, I am grateful and happy for all of my experiences and I love working at PLF Law Firm, but I am also pleased that I have a few years left before I permanently join the work force.

Adulting

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.

Working Life in Vietnam

My projects for the next few weeks that we have left include working on a new PPM for a new fund. A PPM stands for a Private Placement Memorandum. This is a document presented to potential investors. The money granted through a PPM is used to invest in new companies. Currently, IDG is finishing up its second fund and is preparing for its third fund. I am creating and analyzing the new PPM for IDG fund three. Since the last fund was proposed in 2013, a lot of information has changed and IDG wants to focus on new sectors. The main sector I am researching, and proposing is TMT. TMT is technology, media and telecommunications. I will be researching an overview of the sector as a whole to convince and show prospective investors what we would use the find for. Along with TMT, I will be focusing on online ecommerce, retail consumer, healthcare, education, logistics, Greentech, Agri-tech, energy, and Fintech. This PPM is vital for the growth of IDG. The PPM is the only way that IDG will be able to invest in the future. The new fund they are wishing to acquire is worth around $150 million USD. Within the PPM I will analyze the sector markets for trends and show tangible evidence of why investors should give money.

Since I have not met my supervisor in person, it is hard to explain our dynamic. My supervisor is very easy to work with and always gives explanations when asked. he is a very intelligent man and since working with him I have already learned so much. If I even have the tiniest and dumbest questions, he will answer them fully without an inkling of distaste. I really appreciate his willingness to teach me about the subjects we are working on so I can get the most out of this experience. One of the most interesting and probably most heartbreaking things that I have learned about working and living in HCMC is the inequality between women and men. This inequality is not only in the workplace but also in day to day life. I am the only female in my office. I think that this is a common trend in the finance field, so that did not put me off too much. However, there are not very many women working in our building as a whole. One of the things that brought the sexism to my awareness was the ads throughout the building my office is located in. the ads are for a Vietnamese bank. In all of the pictures, the woman is a secretary or a mother to the banking husband. This was shocking because in the united states I know they would not only express women as less than men. We learned in class that in the business world, men are at the top and that has definitely become apparent. On a positive note, we also learned about the rising number of female CEOs in the coming years.

Flowing with new opportunities

Work at Elefos has been progressing nicely over the first three weeks of the internship. The market research that I have done has successfully proved to my supervisor and company that the loyalty points industry is exceptionally large, and poised to grow at very high rate in the future. I have also been able to use my research to help my company determine an entry point into the market. The loyalty point market is not consolidated to a few large competitors, which makes it perfect for a smaller company such as Elefos. It is exciting seeing the work I have done over these three weeks become useful to the company. I am hopeful that as the internship progresses my work will continue to prove useful.

Moving forward I have been assigned to continue market research in the form of competitor equity analysis. This task is a challenging one, but one that I think will be very beneficial to my career growth. Analyzing financial reports is a valuable skill for me as an Economics major, so this task fits perfectly with my growth goals during my time in Vietnam. My supervisor has been very open to answering questions and helping to make sure that I am on the right path in this research process. I am very grateful to have someone in my corner that is so knowledgeable on the industry and the financial work I have been assigned. My other coworkers have also been very supportive in making me feel at home in this new country and workplace. Even the simple things like getting lunch with my coworkers has helped me to feel at home in Ho Chi Minh City. I am excited to see the connections I have made in my workplace continue to grow after the conclusion of my internship

Living in Ho Chi Minh City has taught me to open my mind to new possibilities in the business world. The unstructured way of doing business has helped to show me that not all business run the same way around the world. Working hours being very fluid is an example of this unstructured business setting. Getting work assignments done, and done well, is more important than the logging large amounts of hours, something that I feel makes perfect sense. Work tasks also change rapidly, as the country is obsessed with moving quickly and being first to market.

Already a local

At work, I have smaller projects I work on when they need me to, and one long tail project. The smaller projects have been editing and creating powerpoints, writing my own articles, adapting articles translated into English from Vietnamese, and proofreading existing articles. Before I showed up, there were no native English speakers in my department, so most of the articles read as if they were translated by google translate. Since they were trying to market internationally, I am sure there are plenty of people that didn’t want to come to our events because they were unsure if this was a legitimate event, or if they wouldn’t be able to understand what was going on. Now, they can be sure that this company is real, and that they are very professional. In the last 4 weeks, I want to be able complete updating and editing our websites, I want to present a few more powerpoints, and I want to leave on good terms with my coworkers.

My fellow marketing interns are in charge more of creating social media posts, while I have been assigned to the websites we have in our domain. Whenever they create a post in English, I am always the one to adapt it and make sure that it is proper English, so our relationship works well. My direct supervisor works closely with the design team to create graphics and other things that we use in our marketing efforts. She delegates certain tasks in relation to PR with English speaking sites to me, and I write articles, blog posts, etc. when I am assigned them. I think we work well as a team, and I think I help the company a lot. One thing I have learned while living and working in HCMC is that everyone seems to never get angry/ keep a straight face even when they may be upset. We learned in our cultural week in Gainesville that the Vietnamese are very concerned with the concept of keeping face, and this is most evident in driving. Riding in a Grab (same thing as Lyft and Uber), your driver will get cut off maybe 100 times before you reach your destination. In America, I think the driver would be cussing and yelling if it happened once, but here they just accept it and move on. They are much more likely to not get upset than Americans and I am admire the Vietnamese for it. They seem much happier than people in the US. Below is a man who just wanted to take a picture with us, not really sure why.