My Internship Experience with MatcHub

For many undergraduates, myself included, we often feel overwhelmed with schoolwork and co-curricular activities when the semester starts. This keeps us extremely busy and leaves us with little time to think about doing an internship. However, internships are an excellent way to gain experience, knowledge and skills. More importantly, it helps us find out and ascertain if a certain field is where we can see ourselves in the future.

This is why I took a leap of faith in my fourth semester of university and applied for the Experiential Internship Programme offered by MatcHub. Ever since my polytechnic studies, my internships and part time jobs have revolved around Marketing. As such, I did not have much exposure to other roles like Business Development and Product Management. With this lack of knowledge, it will be a challenge for me to make an informed decision on the direction that I want to work towards. So, when the opportunity came to try out these roles, I took it!

Commencing my internship with the Business Development role, I did not know what to anticipate and I felt uncomfortable with the ambiguity regarding my job scope and the people I will be working with. Furthermore, the fact that this internship required remote working did little to help with my expectations. However, within my first week, the onboarding experiences and interactions with my superiors brought me to a realisation that my worries were in vain.

While there is no doubt that an in-person internship will definitely bring more social interaction, Rayse took the effort to organise consistent dinners or outings to ensure that everyone in the team have a chance to meet and know one another. Those face-to-face meetings provided me the needed social interaction and gave me the opportunity to form relationships with people of different backgrounds. In fact, it is through this outings that I realised one of the interns was in my online class!

Besides recreational activities/outings, I am grateful that guidance was available whenever I needed it. There was hardly a time when I felt alone when facing difficulties in getting tasks done. Rayse and Jolies always took steps to provide me with comprehensive instructions on the assignments and how to go about them. As an introvert, I am very appreciative that they were very open to my questions, opinions and feedback. The transparency, consistent guidance and helpful feedback received from the both of them really made a huge difference for me and my internship experience. Miscommunication was not an issue and I felt that my voice was heard and validated.  

The highlight of my internship was when I received a sudden phone call from a prospect I emailed the night before. Having to switch from student to intern mode immediately actually drove me into a minor state of panic. You see, with emails, I could always present a draft to Rayse before sending them out. With phone calls on the other hand, it was all me. Finally, after what seemed like forever (but was actually only 6 minutes), the phone call ended. Despite my fast-beating heart and sweaty palms, I felt proud of myself for being able to answer the prospect’s queries and being quick enough to jot down the important notes. This phone call helped me to gain a clearer view of professionalism and maintaining customer relationships.

As I reflect on my time spent with MatcHub, this experiential internship allowed me to achieve much on a professional and a personal level. It helped me gain skills and exposure in many different aspects from lead generation and content creation to learning the usage of new CRM tools etc. I also acquired a deeper understanding of the different roles available and the start-up industry in Singapore – all of which are experiences and knowledge that I did not previously have. Other than technical abilities, I have improved on managing my time and priorities and I am now a better communicator with my peers and supervisors alike.  

Even though I may not pursue the roles I tried out at MatcHub, I now have a clearer idea on what I want to specialise in and work towards to. Overall, an experiential internship is one I definitely recommend to any student considering or hoping to discover what is the best fit for them. 

If you find this insightful, check out our piece on “I regret what I’m studying and I can’t see myself in this career – what should I do?” here.