The individual process of job searching:
My goals and expectations were to find an occupation that is most related to what I want to do in the future, which were along the lines of law/writing/journalism. I think that I was able to meet my goals pretty closely because I ended up getting assigned to a magazine that is popular in Singapore and requiring good English skills for this job tells me that I may need to be reading and writing a lot.
The actual outcome was not what I really had planned, as I had planned to apply to a law firm and applied to three before none of them sent me a reply. After not getting a reply from any of them, I decided that maybe it was time to go in another direction, perhaps writing or journalism, and when I saw that the magazine job was free I decided to go for that one.
Through the process of applying for jobs, I have learned that it is not easy to actually find jobs. A lot of companies don’t reply to the mails, or they do not have internships specific to what I am looking for. The search for a job that you want also means that you must have the requirements needed for that job, and sometimes you have to make a sacrifice in order to get the outcome that you want, be it learning a new skill for a new job. I also found that I had to grow as a person and open my mind more to different skills; for example, the magazine company comprises not only of writers but illustrators and editors as well, and through realizing that these were some of the requirements, I was able to research more on these skills and expand on my understanding of them. I feel that there has been some personal growth on my part through this.
Through this process, I have learned how to write a formal letter and how to structure an email properly when writing to a professional company/firm/employer. I will definitely need this skill for the future as when communicating to people of high authority through email, I will need to maintain a formal tone even when online.
For my WOL week, some of my main goals are to understand a lot more about the working environment, as well as to become a better listener/communicator and team worker. Some factors to consider when I am designing these goals are to realize what kind of an environment I will be working in; I assume it will be a very team oriented organization, being a magazine, where everyone’s ideas are compiled together to make one final product.
After recording my summer internship experience, I hope to be able to see in myself someone who is not afraid to share their opinions and ideas, but also be open minded enough and reflective enough to look at my mistakes and learn from them, and be open to hearing other ideas too.
Some ways I can collect evidence of my work; keep a notebook of any ideas I have written/developed for the magazine with everything in the same notebook, photographs of being at work and/or recordings of discussions that took place as well as digital copies of any presentations/pitches that I may make.