Journal for Internship Course 7

Week 1 Discussion Question (DQ) - CLO 1, CLO 2 

· Provide a short biography to the class as an introduction helping to create a community environment. Also, you can respond to the questions shown in the Introduction as an example. The introduction is found in the Internship Course Resources in Supplementary Material in this GAP course. 

· Be sure to add what country you are from along with your educational background and previous work experience. 

· Explain your internship job description.

· Identify the College of Business course that you are currently enrolled in, or if there is no business course that you are taking this session. 

You will be using the business course you are enrolled in, or the previous one taken, to add information to your responses in this course. 

In Week 16 you will be providing a paper, including evidence of achievements this session.

Week 1 Answer

I am originally from Osaka, Japan. I have a Chinese mom, and a Japanese dad, so I grew up in both China and Japan until I came to the US for high school. I spent my high school life and Freshman year in Massachusetts, and I transferred to Pepperdine University from my Sophomore year since I love LA's weather and living environment. I received a Bachelor's Degree in International Business from Pepperdine University in 2018. After my graduation, I fully focused on my job for a year since I wanted to get work experience first. However, I realized pursuing higher education in the business field might be more helpful for my career life, so I started the MBA program at Westcliff University in 2019. I chose Business Statistics and Data Analysis as my concentration here because I want to gain more knowledge on Business Analysis, and effectively use them in my real life. This is my last semester at Westcliff University, and I am taking BUS 505: Managerial Economics course this semester.

          I have been worked in the e-commerce field for 3 years now. After I graduated from Pepperdine, I accept the offer from the biggest Asian E-commerce company call “Yamibuy” as the position of Account Manager for the Marketplace Department. My main job responsibility was to maintain the relationship with sellers on our platform and help them to grow their online retail business. After spending a year and a half in Yamibuy, I found better career opportunities given by my current company, Sunway Nuts USA, Inc. I received an offer with the position of Director of E-commerce, which gave me a chance and challenges to become a leader who could lead the team to expand the business for the company. Sunway Nuts USA, Inc is a startup food trading and distribution company. We are importing and distributing the food from Asia to the US market. Our major selling channels include e-commerce platforms and traditional retail/grocery stores. My team is mainly focusing on the online retail business and the whole business to the mainstream supermarket such as World Market. We are managing the sales and marketing on various online platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and Yamibuy as third-party sellers and vendors. Team management, business development, advertising, and marketing is my major job responsibility. We just started our business with the mainstream supermarket in the US such as World Market. Our biggest goal for Q4 is to expand our business to more mainstream markets such as Costco and Walmart.

Week 2 Discussion Question - CLO 1, CLO 2, CLO 3 

· Read the articles on journaling, review the template in the GAP resources in the course and identify what approach in the articles you found useful and why?

· Post to the discussion board that you have reviewed the journaling materials and what you learned, let us know if you have experience journaling, share your thoughts. If you have questions, please post. Be sure to respond to a peer.

About Journaling: Whether you want to be able to look back at where you started, set a future goal for yourself and seek a new path, or just deal with present issues, journaling helps you do that in a reflective way. You need not write every day. Journaling gives you a place to better understand yourself, to plan your goals, and to follow-up on goals. One pitfall of journaling is that it can become part of a log of your feelings for any one day, try to keep these types of emotional responses from being included in your business journal. (Journal writing tips are provided in the Internship Course Resources under Supplementary Material in this GAP course).

Week 2 Answer

I have started to write a professional journal for almost a year now. I form a habit to write a professional journal from my previous internship class. After writing a journal for a year, I find out that keeping a professional journal could help me to record my career experience such as the achievement that I have made, the project that I was involved in, feedback from my supervisor, new things that I learned and the progress that I have made, etc. Keeping the journal could also help me to look back my performance, and better prioritize the work from those experience that I wrote it out. The professional journal could also help me to expand my career opportunities because it could easily show my work experiences to the recruiters. I would like to continue a good habit of writing professional journals this semester, and I believe that will be a great support for me through my future career.

Week 3 Discussion Question - CLO 1, CLO 2, CLO 3, CLO 4, CLO 5

· Outline and describe in the discussion those components that you will be working on in this session to build or improve your professional portfolio and post to the discussion board.  

For Weeks 3 through 7, keep notes during your internship in your professional journal which each student is creating and reporting on in the CLA 1 in Week 8. 

Week 3 Answer

I have started to build my professional portfolio 2 semesters ago, so I already have a good frame of the portfolio. However, I was involved in some new projects for my work recently, so the contents of the portfolio need to be updated. In this session I will mainly focus on working on these components of my professional portfolio: - Work Experience: As I mentioned in the beginning, I have been working in the new project recently, so I have to update my new project experience and the new skills and knowledge that I learned through this experience. As an Asian food distribution company, we used to focus our sales on the Asian Sales channels such as Yamibuy, Weee, and 99 Ranch Supermarket, etc. However, we want to expand our business to the mainstream market, so our strategy this year is to develop the mainstream sales channel. We started to sell our products on Amazon, eBay as the self retail model, and the world market as the wholesale model. Through the experience of developing our business to the mainstream market, I was able to improve my communication skills and learning a lot of knowledge such as systemize all of the purchase orders and routing requests which is totally different than how it is working with the Asian market. - Resume: In this session, I also want to focus on updating my resume. Since I earned more experience and skills from involving in the new projects, I think I could make my resume more abundant and powerful. These two will be the main components that I want to focus on and improve in my professional portfolio throughout this session.

Week 4 Discussion Question - CLO 1, CLO 5 

· Prepare three (3) to five (5) questions for your interview about your subject’s position, responsibilities and practices. Use two different types of interview/survey questions if possible, obtained through your investigation of research question formats, such as open-ended, rank, and Likert scale questions that would work in your interview. 

· In the Week 4 discussion forum, submit (upload) the interview questions you would like to ask your subject for the class to review and discuss and/or you may upload your questions as an attachment to the DQ by using the instructions in the GAP Course.  This is an opportunity for you and your peers to assist each other. Be sure to respond to a peer.

· Arrange to interview a manager or a supervisor of a department at the company where you intern or a student peer and confirm that you have arranged it. If you want to conduct the interview at a different company, please obtain approval from your professor.  

Be sure to make entries in your journal each week about your experiences.

Week 4 Answer

I would like to interview our COO, Frank Li with the following questions: 1. Why did you choose to work in the food trading and food distribution company? 2. What is the biggest challenge for operating the food trading and distribution company? 3. How did the COVID-19 affected the whole industry? 4. What is your business strategy for the next year?

Week 5 Discussion Question - CLO 1, CLO 3, CLO 5

· You will upload the total interview in the Week 5 assignment file in GAP for the professor.

· In the Week 5 discussion forum you will describe the main points of the interview content and experience.

· Conduct the interview. Share with the class a description about the interview content in the Week 5 discussion (you can upload a file attachment for the professor and place a description in the discussion and converse with your classmates about the interview). 

· What are some of the major observations you made in regard to your interview; were you satisfied with the information gained during the interview? 

· What are some of your own personal strengths and weaknesses related to the interview process? 

Be sure to make entries in your journal about the Interview. 

Week 5 Answer

I conducted an interview with our COO, Frank Li, on September 29th. It was a very great experience to learn about the industry, company, and business strategy from the management level. It helps me to better understand how our business working, and what will be our next steps and goals. Mr. Li was very patient, and he was happy to share his experiences with me.

The major observations that I made in regard to my interview are to watch the facial expressions, build a relaxed atmosphere and expand the topics based on the current conversations. I was very satisfied with the information gained during the interview. It was a very great learning opportunity.

My personal strengths related to the interview process are building a relaxed atmosphere and expand the conversations. my weakness is time management.

Week 6 Discussion Question - CLO 1, CLO 2, CLO 3 

· What are two significant technical trends you learned about viewing this video? 

· How will data science impact your work? 

· After viewing the video, do you have any further insight into how the core skills of the data scientist can help to solve company problems? Give an example. 

Discussion Information:   View the video “Can You Become a Data Scientist?” by 365 Data Science (7:54mins) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AkBfBWr_Gw

Be sure to make entries in your journal each week about your experiences.

Week 6 Answer

• What are two significant technical trends you learned about viewing this video? Big Data, Machine Learning, and AI are the most significant technical trends that I learned from the video. These technical trends could be very helpful to determine the success of the businesses. • How will data science impact your work? Data Science could help to determine the success of businesses. It could help to make the prediction for sales and numbers, and AI could help social media companies and e-commerce companies to analyze the consumer’s buying behaviors. • After viewing the video, do you have any further insight into how the core skills of the data scientist can help to solve company problems? Give an example. The core skills of data scientists could help the company such as trading companies and retailers to purchase the items in precise numbers and frequencies to make the largest benefits. It could also help to analyze the customer’s data such as buying behaviors or interesting topics.

Week 7 Discussion Question - CLO 1, CLO 2, CLO 3, CLO 5 

· Describe what “tell me about yourself” really means in an interview.

· How do you best address this question?

· Of the four tips from the video, use one tip to best describe how you would reply. 

Discussion information: View the video “Tell me about yourself - A Good Answer to This Interview Question” by Linda Raynier (7:05 min) at 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kayOhGRcNt4  

Be sure to make entries in your journal each week about your experiences.