INTERN STORIES | Tiep Nguyen internship with Delaware North
Tiep completed a Business and Data Analyst internship with Delaware North as part of her degree at La Trobe University.
Hear about her internship experience
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Video transcription
Tell us about your internship experience
InternMatch has helped me find my internship through my course coordinator and my internship coordinator. I'm working at Delaware North. It's a hospitality group. It's a business owned company based in New York, but they have a big management company in Australia and New Zealand where they manage the hospitality (services) in Marvel Stadium, Melbourne Cricket Group, and some of the (shopping) outlets in the airport.
What was your role at Delaware North?
I'm working at the procurement department where we communicate with suppliers, companies like Coke, and confirm the information. We ran one of the latest projects called SCM reset. (This is) because the company is very big and some of their data hasn't been looked into for the past six years. So at the moment, they needed to merge all of their platforms together and they needed someone to look into their data and make sure it's correct and sufficient. That is what I'm doing at the moment.
The first two weeks were (filled with) onboarding sessions. They introduce the company and the team and what my role would be for the eight weeks of my internship with them. On the second day, I got the chance to join the monthly meeting of the department which was a team meeting with all of the procurement people from different states and different cities. So we received more knowledge about what we were doing.
Why did you choose to do an internship?
Instead of another elective subject in uni. And obviously after speaking to my course coordinator and my friends, I felt like doing the internship helped me make more connections. Instead of just having my course coordinator, I had my internship coordinator who are people from the industry and they have a different perspective.
When I work in a company, it is more challenging than just a normal assessment, because I understand what they need, what their challenges are at the moment. Especially for the company I work for, being a big corporation, their data process is actually a challenge. That's why they want to improve it and it's great to know those insights and know what happens in the industry.
Surprisingly, when this opportunity came to me, when I read the (job) description, about the company and about the department, I was so excited. Even before I got to the interview, I (realised), oh this is gonna be the company that I will love to work for if I get the opportunity to interview with them and they accept me.
The other thing I was looking for is an internship that was face to face (in-person). I had been suffering so much for the past two years through online (learning). That is why I was concerned at first, because I was looking for a role where I could interact with people and have a chance to see them face to face.
What advice would you give individuals pursuing a similar path?
If you land into any position, make sure that you understand more about the company and more about the industry that you are getting into. During my internship in such a big corporation, they did not ask me many questions. They just shared their project first and asked me how I felt about it. So feel free to share about yourself, but do educate yourself before your interview. Later, when you get into the position, spend the first week learning about the company culture, learn about the company’s expectations as well.
At some point my coordinator would ask me, “Oh do you want to continue with this task or do you want to move on to a different one?” Feel free to share (your experiences and concerns) with your coordinator and they will be helpful.
What were your key takeaways from this internship experience?
One of my department heads told us that the reason why they needed this kind of project and why they needed interns to be part of their team, was to make sure that the project ran well. And she always mentioned, “Oh, your presence here is very meaningful to us and you're doing a great job.”
It was just the first week of my internship and I feel so much motivation because of it and I think that's the reason why it kept me going for the last two months of the internship. That is what gave me that motivation. Now I feel comfortable and confident sharing that I have been working in the real industry for the last three months, so now I’ve got the knowledge and the thinking about what has happened out there. And now you have points in your CV to show the recruiter that you have the ability to handle the job.