Esmeraldo L. Calupas, Jr.
The internship program, where we worked for the Philippine Academy of Management (PAoM), enabled us to gain a first-hand exposure on working in the real world. It allowed us to harness our skills, knowledge, and theoretical practices that we learned in our university. The internship program helped us to set attainable goals and effectively achieve them under pressure. As interdisciplinary business studies student, we were tasked to create a digital marketing plan for the company where we utilized all our knowledge from our marketing courses and gave us a chance to explore what certain careers in business and marketing would be like. At the same time, learning about the process of working in a publication organization; from articulating academic papers and editing layouts of journals to be published. We realized every industry has different operations and affairs that sometimes would not meet our expectations and realized that these types of jobs are not suited for some people with different interests. However, through these relevant experiences, we discovered and acquired skills and abilities which improve our capabilities as young professionals that we can bring to the table once we get to apply to our future careers.
One of the things that I learnt from my internship was the expertise or skills required to complete tasks in the field. As our team decided to go for social media marketing, my internship provided me with skills and expertise to run social media for a business. Though I was aware of using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and others on a personal level, the way businesses start their campaigns are different, unique, and very interesting. During the brainstorming sessions of our internship where every department of the company was present, I understood the idea of aligning the brand story, mission and vision of the business with every social media post or campaign that you run for the business. In my internship experience, I developed skills and expertise that are required for social media marketing. I also realized that in every company I’ll work for, there is a high probability that I will not be familiar with the platforms the company uses. But I should always be ready to know my way around a computer, and utilize my ability to navigate basic productivity software will likely be presumed. These are some of the most common skills that employers seek in interns, as well as applicants for entry-level jobs. I learned to make sure how to familiarize myself with the particular industries with other skills and traits that may be desirable in the field that I will choose in the future.
Jose M. Go IV
My time as an intern at the Philippine Academy of Management (PAoM) allowed me to hone many skills that I believe are important as I step out into the real world in the near future. In PAoM, I was able to work on a digital marketing plan, interact with management scholars, while maintaining day-to-day operations such as being in contact with the PAoM team and its members. All these made me understand how a real organization works, and how important every single aspect of the team is essential for its success. Through the digital marketing plan we created, I realized that marketing is an integral part of the success of the organization, especially now amid the COVID-19 pandemic where the need for going digital is vital to reach wider audiences. Through creating an effective marketing campaign, our team hopes for PAoM to reconnect with its members and ensure their participation in all their future projects and initiatives. More than that, I came to understand the process of how scholarly publications are published, and how much work is put into it not just by its writers but all those responsible for reviewing it and publishing it.
Through PAoM, I was able to identify my strong skills and what I needed to work on more to become successful in the future. I am glad I was able to hone my skills in digital marketing, as I believe this is integral in businesses nowadays. As I plan to enter our family business in the future, which is a traditional freight forwarding and logistics business, I believe what I’ve learned in digital marketing will help us adapt to the digital age, which is essential in making sure our businesses adapt to the times. Meanwhile, I believe I also need to work on my communication skills some more. I tend to be quite shy when conversing with other people, as I am not too confident with my communication skills. However, I realize now that it is also such an important skill to hone especially in the business world, as it is a way to gain more customers and to interact with my colleagues and those in the company.
Ultimately, I am glad that we chose PAoM as our practicum organization, as it was a holistic experience that allowed me to gain insight in numerous business fields. Through learning about PAoM, its conferences and e-journals, I was able to learn more about different fields which made me see which of these I could potentially be a part of in the future.
Vince Esguerra
A competency that I believe I possess is being able to come up with marketing strategies related to current trends. I believe this to be my strength because I find it interesting and it helps me to use more of the knowledge and research in learning more about the trends. A competency that I believe and would want to improve is to have better Excel and emailing knowledge for more convenient processing and operation of tasks. I need to develop these skills as there are more convenient ways of doing multiple tasks through proper instructions and being able to maximize the features of Office applications.
In order to further develop this competency, I must be able to not only learn new techniques in operating Excel and other Office applications but also apply it daily so that I may be able to use it with ease and consistency. Proper training and application will help further develop these skills and to better the outputs in the near future. A lesson I wish to bring to future jobs is to be more creative and seeing the perspective of other creative individuals when creating a plan and strategizing for potential projects. Learning to adjust and ways of being compatible to ease work flow among co-workers through effective communication is another lesson I will be bringing to future jobs.
The practicum program was able to help me in identifying my career goals by learning about the working environment of a company composed of professionals and academicians eager to learn more in the field of Business and Management. The program gave me insights in the learning capabilities of research and development in this field, which is related to my current course.
Frances Pauline A. Recto
Working for the Philippine Academy of Management helped me gain first-hand experience
on what it’s like to work in the real world. The Philippine Academy of Management or PAoM is a non-profit scholarly organization that focuses on empowering and developing management scholars in the Philippines. My groupmates and I were given tasks that were not familiar to us as Business students but it helped us gain skills and knowledge, and we were able to apply theories that we have gained from our subjects into practice.
One of the skills that I have gained or developed from the internship program is my
leadership skills. I firmly believe that one of my strengths is my leadership skills. Although I was not formally chosen to be a leader for the group, I still tried my best to lead them in my own ways. I gave out instructions and designate tasks to each member whenever the client assigned a task for us to finish. I set goals for each member and gave them deadlines to be able to finish the task at hand. Being a leader is not an easy job, but I firmly believe that I have given my best as the leader of the group and that my leadership skills were sufficient which led us to the completion of each activity. Although I consider my leadership skill as a strength, I also consider it as a weakness that I need to further develop. As a Business student, we should be looking forward to becoming the next Business leader in the future. To be able to become a successful business leader needs a lot of experience, which is something I lack.
I may have led the group to accomplish all of our goals in my own way, but that does not always guarantee that my style of leadership is also applicable to other people. I still have a lot to experience and I should be able to adapt to changes quickly to be able to become successful.
Another skill that I have gained or developed is my organization skills. Ever since I was a
child, I have always been organized with all my stuff and schedules. This has helped me with my time management skills in the present and has really helped me with the tasks given by the client. As the leader, I needed to organize all the activities and their respective deadlines. I also needed to devise a plan and designate the tasks given to us to be able to accomplish our goal. Being organized helped me accomplish all of these and also helped me manage my time between my academic requirements and practicum requirements.
The activities given to us by PAoM helped us manage our time effectively as we have
learned to set goals and achieve them under pressure. The organization also helped us discover and acquire skills that were unknown to us and have used them to our advantage. Being an Interdisciplinary Business student has also helped us overcome all the challenges along the way as we easily adapted and were able to provide immediate solutions to the problems at hand. However, since most of us have different interests, we also discovered that working in the publishing industry might not be the best fit. This has helped my group mates and I realize that we still have a lot to experience and we still have to go through different fields to be able to find out what is truly right for us. Overall, we were satisfied with our internship program with PAoM because they have given us the opportunity to learn and discover our hidden abilities and skills through their program.
Philippine Academy of Management 