Week three concluded and that means 1/3 of the internship is officially over. It was an exciting three weeks that included my first ever international business trip! I got to see and meet people from the Germany office. I realized that there the Company has a similar vibe, which is good because it means that there is a strong Company culture that carries over, but the market is completely differrnt. In Italy, we are a large player and a market leader in many senses, but there, we are struggeling for survival. I cannot wait to really delve in deep to figure out what we can do better.
Next week I will spend some time with a sales manager before going back to Germany for three weeks. Thursday and Friday I have a chance to go to the world's largest resilient fair in Germany, so I am excited to get a chance to see the competitors in action and talk to some end users.
until then,
cheers.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
In it to win it!
The weather has gone through hurricane force winds, heavy rain, and finally beautiful sunshine, so it makes it hard to believe that it has only been two weeks since the start of the internship. As mentioned before, these past two weeks have been a whirlwind of practical and theoretical training, company introductions, and eating (lots of eating). Tomorrow I leave for Germany on what will be my first international business trip. I am pretty excited for it. While there for the next three days, I will be introduced to the German office and meet the rest of the people that I will be working for this summer.
The trip should be nice and will give me an opportunity to understand what the Company's international operations look like. It is important for me to understand as much of the company as I can so that way, if I get an offer, I will be well prepared and informed on any decisions I have to make.
Currently on my mind I have some of the pros and cons: PROS: I think the Company is in a very interesting market that will continue to grow in the future. They Company has also done an excellent job with staffing. The CEO attends every interview and only hires those who believes has strong character (in addition to intelligence). The Company is young and flexible and is able to quickly adapt to any changes in the market place. Further, it seems that they treat their employees well! There are quite a few benefits that come with working here, and the Company truly believes that its employees are the number one assets. CONS: there are not many cons but one is that the busiest time of year is the summer, which means vacationing in summer may be difficult. Secondly, it is a family business. This means that the family takes many of the high positions in the Company which may limit potential to grow and may cause some politically interesting work scenarios.
Anyway, enjoying my time here now and can't wait to experience my first international b trip!
The trip should be nice and will give me an opportunity to understand what the Company's international operations look like. It is important for me to understand as much of the company as I can so that way, if I get an offer, I will be well prepared and informed on any decisions I have to make.
Currently on my mind I have some of the pros and cons: PROS: I think the Company is in a very interesting market that will continue to grow in the future. They Company has also done an excellent job with staffing. The CEO attends every interview and only hires those who believes has strong character (in addition to intelligence). The Company is young and flexible and is able to quickly adapt to any changes in the market place. Further, it seems that they treat their employees well! There are quite a few benefits that come with working here, and the Company truly believes that its employees are the number one assets. CONS: there are not many cons but one is that the busiest time of year is the summer, which means vacationing in summer may be difficult. Secondly, it is a family business. This means that the family takes many of the high positions in the Company which may limit potential to grow and may cause some politically interesting work scenarios.
Anyway, enjoying my time here now and can't wait to experience my first international b trip!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
one is done.
The first week has come and gone, and now it is time to look back a bit and reflect back on my first week re-gainfully employed. The first week on the job was basically the theoretical training portion of the internship. I learned a lot about the Company's strategy, products, and philosophy. I mentioned in my first post that I was impressed with their strategy and philosophy, but I would like to reiterate it now. I really enjoyed their outlook on the business that they run and the industry they operate in.
The theory was required knowledge necessary to perform any market research, but at the same time, I found it fascinating and I could picture myself staying excited about the products (or really, the manner in which they produce and market) for a long time to come. Along with the theory we got to meet several area managers for the Company as well as several other functional positions within the Company. I think everyone was really smart and they all seemed to get a long quite well. I enjoyed talking to everyone and cannot wait to further some of these discussions in the future.
One of the things I currently like is that I am able to speak Italian for about 40% of the day. I think as time goes on that this number will increase to nearly 100%. There are two interns that don't speak a lick of Italian now, so they would have some problems if we did the training in Italian. The cool thing is though, that when we do hold a conversation in Italian, I find myself understanding nearly 100% of what is being said. This is a huge improvement over 9 months ago.
Anyway, as the training comes to an end and I start to really define my role here at work, I will post more reflectful pieces.
cheers.
The theory was required knowledge necessary to perform any market research, but at the same time, I found it fascinating and I could picture myself staying excited about the products (or really, the manner in which they produce and market) for a long time to come. Along with the theory we got to meet several area managers for the Company as well as several other functional positions within the Company. I think everyone was really smart and they all seemed to get a long quite well. I enjoyed talking to everyone and cannot wait to further some of these discussions in the future.
One of the things I currently like is that I am able to speak Italian for about 40% of the day. I think as time goes on that this number will increase to nearly 100%. There are two interns that don't speak a lick of Italian now, so they would have some problems if we did the training in Italian. The cool thing is though, that when we do hold a conversation in Italian, I find myself understanding nearly 100% of what is being said. This is a huge improvement over 9 months ago.
Anyway, as the training comes to an end and I start to really define my role here at work, I will post more reflectful pieces.
cheers.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Work or Bust? The Internship Begins
Hey All -
I guess I want to keep an updated account of my internship so everyone knows how my life outside Auditing is going. I am going to try and write it as unbiased as possible, so that way when I reread this in a couple months, I will have an honest account of my feelings throughout the internship so in case I get a full-time offer, I can have something to help make a decision on.
So I arrived here in Modena on Friday. I have to admit, I loved the city at first sight, so I was pretty bummed when I discovered that I will be living 15 km outside Modena in a tiny city called Fiorano. It is most well know (read only known for) the Ferrari race track here. The apartment itself is an interesting building. There are four of us interns here, and we were all a little disappointed about it. The apartment is recently restored, however, the furniture dates from, what I would guess, the turn of the century. Currently there is no hot water, but that should come tomorrow. Besides that the town is *charming*.
The internship started today at 10:00am. Today we mostly learned about the company's product offerings. XXXXX is tagged as the XXXXXX. Most of their products are green certified, and they go out of their way to source organic raw materials. When I first accepted the offer, I thought that this would be right up my alley. I will be doing a market development project in Germany this summer, and that too was very interesting to me, but I was worried about working in an Italian company. It is said that Italian companies are inefficient, formal, and way too political. I can tell you that my first impression of work was anything but that!!!!! The culture is very informal, and it appears to be run on German efficiency, well, ok maybe not German, but certainly pretty efficient. I will discover the political situation as time goes on.
Needless to say, that this was a giant relief. The production facilities and warehousing are nearly 100% automated and efficiency ratings are very high. This was most certainly unexpected, but reassuring to me. We got to see the two plants here surrounding Modena and then see their state of the art learning lab. Work has a pretty cool business model and positions themselves as a high quality (high cost) producer of building supplies ranging from paint to pvc to adhesives. I won't go into too much more details about the detail of the Company, but rather on a broad scope they seem like a top notch and high savvy company.
The people there all seem really friendly. This was not a surprise, but merely a bonus. Everyone we spoke to was extremely knowledgeable about the industry, company, and products they offer. I was impressed by the business savvy that every employee has; from the R&D and Quality Control departments, to area managers, to the engineers, all of them were top notch people.
I will cut this a bit short as I am exhausted from my first day, but before I leave, I discovered today that I will be leaving to Germany sometime next week, so that is something to look forward to!
cheers,
I guess I want to keep an updated account of my internship so everyone knows how my life outside Auditing is going. I am going to try and write it as unbiased as possible, so that way when I reread this in a couple months, I will have an honest account of my feelings throughout the internship so in case I get a full-time offer, I can have something to help make a decision on.
So I arrived here in Modena on Friday. I have to admit, I loved the city at first sight, so I was pretty bummed when I discovered that I will be living 15 km outside Modena in a tiny city called Fiorano. It is most well know (read only known for) the Ferrari race track here. The apartment itself is an interesting building. There are four of us interns here, and we were all a little disappointed about it. The apartment is recently restored, however, the furniture dates from, what I would guess, the turn of the century. Currently there is no hot water, but that should come tomorrow. Besides that the town is *charming*.
The internship started today at 10:00am. Today we mostly learned about the company's product offerings. XXXXX is tagged as the XXXXXX. Most of their products are green certified, and they go out of their way to source organic raw materials. When I first accepted the offer, I thought that this would be right up my alley. I will be doing a market development project in Germany this summer, and that too was very interesting to me, but I was worried about working in an Italian company. It is said that Italian companies are inefficient, formal, and way too political. I can tell you that my first impression of work was anything but that!!!!! The culture is very informal, and it appears to be run on German efficiency, well, ok maybe not German, but certainly pretty efficient. I will discover the political situation as time goes on.
Needless to say, that this was a giant relief. The production facilities and warehousing are nearly 100% automated and efficiency ratings are very high. This was most certainly unexpected, but reassuring to me. We got to see the two plants here surrounding Modena and then see their state of the art learning lab. Work has a pretty cool business model and positions themselves as a high quality (high cost) producer of building supplies ranging from paint to pvc to adhesives. I won't go into too much more details about the detail of the Company, but rather on a broad scope they seem like a top notch and high savvy company.
The people there all seem really friendly. This was not a surprise, but merely a bonus. Everyone we spoke to was extremely knowledgeable about the industry, company, and products they offer. I was impressed by the business savvy that every employee has; from the R&D and Quality Control departments, to area managers, to the engineers, all of them were top notch people.
I will cut this a bit short as I am exhausted from my first day, but before I leave, I discovered today that I will be leaving to Germany sometime next week, so that is something to look forward to!
cheers,
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