Some soft skills that I have developed so far include time management, communication, and problem-solving abilities. Coming into the internship, I was not sure how the work I would be doing would be framed. After the first day, I realized that instead of having daily tasks to complete, I had one big project that I would have to track over the course of 8 weeks. This helped me develop strong time management skills, as I had to section out my work each week and keep track of my progress to ensure I was on the right track and not falling behind.
I have also been able to improve my communication skills, especially in a professional setting and a different culture. Initially, I wasn’t sure how to reach out to my boss about questions. Should I message him? Should I go up to him while working? I was also afraid of asking questions that were “stupid” or asking too many questions, with the thought that my boss would want me to already know. After the first week, however, I learned that questions were more than encouraged. My boss was actually very happy that I was asking questions about my project because it showed initiative and interest in ensuring the work I was doing was accurate and detailed.
Lastly, I’ve developed my problem-solving skills in a work setting. Since my project didn’t come with a step-by-step guide, I had to figure out a lot of things on my own as I went. There were plenty of moments where I hit a roadblock, whether that meant not having enough information, not knowing which direction to take my research, or realizing halfway through that my approach wasn’t quite working. Instead of getting stuck or waiting for someone to tell me exactly what to do, I had to learn to step back, think through my options, and try a different approach. This has taught me to be more comfortable with trial and error, and to see mistakes as part of the process instead of something to be afraid of. I’ve become a lot more confident in my ability to figure things out, even when I don’t have all the answers right away.
On the technical side, I’ve picked up several hard skills that I know will be useful in my future career. One of the biggest has been learning Excel on a much deeper level than I ever had before. I had to build spreadsheets from scratch to organize and track all of my work. I had to go through trial and error on how to make my research comprehensible and organized for my boss. Excel went from being a program I used occasionally for class to a tool I now rely on almost every day to keep my entire project on track.
I’ve also learned how to do deep, thorough research on organizations, which was a completely new skill for me. Instead of just looking up basic facts about a company, I had to dig into things like their mission, their past partnerships, their funding, and how well they’d actually fit with what my company was trying to do. This meant learning how to sort through a lot of information quickly, figure out what was actually relevant, and then organize it into something clear and useful. I had to get comfortable knowing when I had done “enough” research and when I needed to keep digging, which is a balance I definitely didn’t have in the beginning.
Right now, I’m working on writing formal business proposals, which has been one of the more challenging hard skills to build. Before this internship, most of my writing experience was academic, meaning essays and reports for class. Learning to write in a professional, persuasive tone that’s still clear and to the point has been a completely different skill to develop. I’ve had to learn how to take a lot of research and background information and condense it down into something short, direct, and convincing for a business audience that doesn’t have time to read through pages of detail.
Beyond soft and hard skills, this internship has also pushed me to grow in what I’d call my global competencies, meaning my ability to understand, respect, and work well within a culture that’s different from my own. Working in a Korean company as an American intern has meant constantly adjusting the way I communicate and ask for help, especially learning to navigate hierarchy by being more mindful of tone and timing with senior coworkers. It’s also meant getting comfortable with uncertainty, whether that’s misreading a social cue or not knowing the “right” way to do something, and learning to stay calm and adaptable instead of overthinking it. These are skills I don’t think I could have built anywhere except by actually living and working in a different country.
