Journal for Internship Course 2

Week 1 DQ

I am working in the food trading company called Sunway Nuts USA, Inc. as a Director of E-commerce. Our company mainly imports the foods from China. We are dividing our business into the 2 main business models: wholesaling the products as the distributor and retailing the products through e-commerce platform. As I mentioned in the beginning of the paragraph, I am working for the e-commerce department. I am leading the team with total of 5 people to manage and maintain the business on the online platforms from Listing, Marketing, Inventory Management, Customer Service and Fulfillment. etc. We are currently selling our products on both Asian e-commerce websites such as Yamibuy, Weee, Taobao, and mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Amazon. In addition, we recently released our own B2B wholesale website to improve the purchase order process from our business clients and better inventory management. I am excited to expand our e-commerce business and optimize the management.

Week 2 DQ

I found the article on journaling is very informative and useful after reading it. Honestly, I never wrote the journal before, and this will be my very first time to write the journal to record my career path and lessons. I am very excited because I think this will be a good chance for me to form the habit of journaling. 

I agree with the points in the article that journaling could help to keep recording the lessons that we learned from our daily work experience, track the performance, advice from supervisor, and plan the future goals based on the daily. By doing so, it could helps to inspire one with the great ideas, review the performance timely, recognize the achievement and better to plan the career path. 

Week 3 DQ

A professional journal is a great material to represent one's background and professional experience. Especially, it will be helpful for the interviewers to learn about the person quickly through the detailed documents. 

I have never created a professional journal before, and I think this will be a good chance for me to build my professional journal. In my previous experience, I used to only present my resume to the organizations. However, I think the resume itself is not strong enough to let the interviewer to learn about me because the resume does not include the detailed experience. I wish I could build a strong professional portfolio through the course as a strong support document for my future career path. 

          Here is the outline of my professional portfolio:

1. Table of Content

2. Cover Letter

3. Resume

4. Letter of Recommendation

5. Certifications

6. Honors/Awards

7. Project Outcomes

8. Leadership Highlights

Week 4 DQ

I will conduct the interview with my direct supervisor, Frank Li, who is the Chief Operational Officer of Sunway Nuts USA, Inc. Frank is in charge of all areas of operation of the company includes seeking new business opportunities, wholesale business, and e-commerce retail business. He is about the same age as me, but he has a remarkable talent for business, and he has a penetrating insight into the market. Therefore, it will be a great opportunity to interview and learn the lessons from him. The interview will be conducted via zoom.

Here is the list of the questions for the interview:

1. When did you start to contact with trading industry and figured out that you are interested in this area?

2. What is your opinion about the international business, and what is the biggest challenge for it?

3. How do you balance the wholesale business and e-commerce retail business?

4. Please tell me about your future plan you developed for the company.

5. On a 1-10 point scale, please rate your ability as the leader of the company.

  I interviewed our Chief Operational Officer, Frank Li, via the Zoom meeting on September 28th. We had a very meaningful conversation and it was definitely helpful for my career development in the future.  I was pretty nervous at the begging of the interview since he is one of the most elite people in our company. However, he was very humble and willing to share the experience with me. 

      My personal strengths in the interview process are being a good listener and able to expand the topics. I think my weakness in the interview process is time control. I was planning to only take half an hour for the interview because Frank has a busy schedule, but the whole interview process took about an hour. 

  I have attached the summary of the interview below as the word document:

Week 5 DQ

I interviewed our Chief Operational Officer via the Zoom meeting on September 28th. We had a very meaningful conversation and it was definitely helpful for my career development in the future.  I was pretty nervous at the begging of the interview since he is one of the most elite people in our company. However, he was very humble and willing to share the experience with me. 

My personal strengths in the interview process are being a good listener and able to expand the topics. I think my weakness in the interview process is time control. I was planning to only take half an hour for the interview because Frank has a busy schedule, but the whole interview process took about an hour. 

Please find attached as the summary of the interview:

1. When did you start to contact with trading industry and figured out that you are interested in this area?

I started to contact with the trading industry when I was a Junior of the college. I got the chance to contact with this company because of our CEO Gang Bao. He is a very successful businessman and I met him during the family dinner. He is one of the friends of my family. When we had a conversation during the dinner, we talked about my future career plan and my thoughts on the business. He found my idea of the food trading was very interesting, so he invited me to startup the business with him for the food trading.

I stared to have the interest on the food distribution because of my girlfriend. She was working in the biggest Asian e-commerce company, and she gave me the inspiration of our business.

2. What is your opinion about the international business, and what is the biggest challenge for it?

As a global citizen, I think international business is very interesting, I am proud of myself by brining my hometown culture to the United States.

The biggest challenge for the international business is the importing process, especially for the consuming products. I faced a lot of difficulty at the beginning because of the unfamiliarity for the FDA and USDA regulations.

3. How do you balance the wholesale business and e-commerce retail business?

It is challenging to maintain both wholesale and retail business, because wholesale market could heavily impact the sales for online e-commerce retail business due to the similarity of the products. However, I found the way to balance these two parts of the business by differentiating the selling products.

4. Please tell me about your future plan you developed for the company.

My future plan for the company is to enter the mainstream market such as Costco, Walmart and Amazon, etc. I will start to plan for our own food brand by localizing the products and packages.

5. On a 1-10 point scale, please rate your ability as the leader of the company.

I think I will give myself 9 points as the leader of the company, because I think I have a strong ability to motivate the employees and share the vision with them to accomplish our goals.

Week 6 DQ

  Discuss what is said in the video about the success rate of change initiatives?

According to the video, the success rate of change initiatives is as low as 54%. Which is surprisingly lower than what I have expected.

·        Describe the biggest mistake change managers make? What is the impact?

The biggest mistake which change managers make is not prioritizing on the plenty amount of changes and that could make all the changes mess because it is hard to handle the different changes at the same times. Another mistake is the dictatorship of the CEO and top-level management team about what should be changed and how it should work. The key reason of why the change initiatives fails is because the change managers think that communication is equal to engagement. Three of the impacts of failed change management are unachieved results, wasting time and resources, and employees’ poor performance.  

·        Review what is said about culture?

Organization culture is built based on how people believes, acts, and feels within the organization. It is influenced by the formal aspects of the company and mixed backgrounds and personalities. Change manager should figure out the strengths of the culture to initiates the successful changes.

·        What do you need to create in the organization to have effective change?

First, CEO and top-level management team should listen and respect to the opinions from employees to make the coherent environment and acting as the role model.  Next, change managers needs to clearly address the priority of the changes and share the vision before everyone starts to involve into it. Lastly, it is incredibly important for the change manager to learn about the company cultures, and motivate employees by treating and rewarding them correctly.

Week 7 DQ

What are the three top skills that you need to include to make your internship successful based on the video advice and/or other recommendations you have received?

The three top skills that I need to include to make my internship successful are leadership skill, people skill and responsibility. As a e-commerce Director in the company, I need to have a strong leadership skill to lead the whole team towards the accomplishments. At the same time, people skill is also very important for me because I need to learn and analyze the personality of each and build the great relationships with the teammates to properly motivate each of them. Lastly, responsibility is definitely important as the employee of the company and leader of the team to bring more assets to the company.

How to make the most of your internship, what is one change you will make to excel?

          It is important to keep the positive attitude in the company to show the respect to the job and co-workers and be the good model of the followers.

Do you have a recommendation for class members?

          I recommend my classmate to be proactive in the company and accept the challenges during the internship to show the attitude and ability. Additionally, it is important to build the great relationships with the co-workers and supervisors to create the cohesive work environment, and expand the social circle as well.  

 

Week 9 DQ

Discussion Information: Review the link on “How to ask for a Raise” at

https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/words-phrases-to-use-salary-negotiations/

Discussion Question – CLO 1, CLO 3, CLO 4, CLO 5

· Have you asked for a raise in your career currently? Previously? Explain how you did it? Was it successful? If you have not, what has stopped you in the past, please elaborate.

· Now after reading the negotiation phrasing, do you believe you could have done better in requesting a raise?  What would you have changed? 

· What phrasing did you feel most comfortable using in the future?

  I have asked for a raise in my previous company, Yamibuy. It was successful because I prepared a lot of supporting materials before I negotiated with my supervisor. The first supporting material that I prepared is my completeness based on my KPI. Everyone in our team gets the quarterly KPI goals based at the beginning of the year. As an Account Manager of the Marketplace department, my main measure for the KPI was the performance of my accounts, and my goal was set based on each seller's previous performances and the predicted performance for the new sellers. All of these data were provided by our Business Intelligence Team. My KPI completeness of the first quarter had reached 130%, so that was the strongest support for my raise negotiation. The second support material that I provided is the success of the new project. I had assigned as the project lead for our new project called "China Consolidation Program". I had successfully led the team and launched our new project. The last thing that I provided was the future plan for our department. I explained what I could bring to the company, and how I will do it as an action. The whole negotiation went very successfully, and my supervisor agreed to the raise immediately. 

           Overall, I think I did great for the negotiation because I prepared strong supporting materials ahead of the negotiation, and also mentioned what I could do for the company in the future. However, there is still more space for me to do better. 

          The phrase that I feel the most comfortable to use in the future is "If you can do that, I'm on board." because that phrase gives a second negotiation chance to both attendees and recruiters.

Week 11 DQ

How does the video define knowledge?

The video defined knowledge in six aspects -- a fact, information, skills acquired through education and training, one's understanding of a subject and awareness of the world, as well as familiarity of a fact/situation. As here implied, the source of knowledge can be rather abundant and diverse. One can gain knowledge through education by pursuing different degrees, taking certification tests, or simply by consume traditional or social media content.

The purpose and goal of knowledge management

The purpose of knowledge management is to make sure a person can find the right knowledge at the right moment. However, for an organization, knowledge management can help with decision-making and prompt knowledge sharing, which is crucial for innovations. 

Examples could be doctors checking medical indexes to diagnose a patient, or a technician checking the right manual to fix a machinery. For corporations, management could use the data accrued from past operations to derive insights that could impact future decisions. 

The DIKW Structure

The DIKW structure stands for Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom. Data is pure output captured by activities or purposeful gatherings. Information is the derived from data by analysis, such as cost trends, average cost, etc.. Knowledge is gained by interpreting the information and testing it by apply it in everyday operations. In the end, wisdom is the principal that came out from the knowledge and the testing of it. 

Week 13 DQ

     What recommendations do you have for yourself to be more effective and productive in the workplace based on your performance this session? 

The recommendation I have for myself to be more effective and productive in the work place is to plan ahead with the tasks using the to-do list and prioritizing the task by level of emergency, record my schedule on the calendar as a reminder, effectively use the Teambition (task planning software) to communicate with the teammate and following up the projects on time.

·        What type of performance review would you find helpful to assess your progress?

I found the comprehensive performance review which covering my ability, team working skills, problem-solving skills, communication skills, completeness of my KPI and feedback from the supervisor is helpful to assess my progress.

·        What would you communicate to your supervisor during your performance review?

I would ask for the advises or recommendations from my supervisor to find out what I could do more for the better performance and my career planning.

·        What information in your performance review could you use in your Professional Portfolio?

I could use the feedback of the performance from my direct supervisor in my Professional Portfolio for the further improvement.