It is the exam period now so STRESS is the word. My pimples are coming back to find me now! Exam starts next Mon and will last till early May. I have been trying to get an internship this coming summer break (May - Aug) but the search has been fruitless until yesterday. I sent applications to 6 companies of varying scale and industry and only 1 got back to me for an interview. I was pretty disappointed at the response, but I would guess my lousy grades played a part there.
The company which selected me is a MNC in the transportation & logistics industry (I will reveal the name if I clinch the internship). Luckily, the interviewer is a very nice person although he is the regional project manager in APAC (Asia Pacific) region. Similarly, the intern is expected to work on projects in APAC. He asked a few challenging questions and I thought it might be good for me to share, if anyone reading is going for an interview.
Besides the standard "Tell me more about your yourself... your strengths and weakness" kind of questions. He asked deeper questions like "Give an example of a situation to demonstrate your strength" (My strength was a strong sense of responsibility). The next tough question was "Why should I hire you?". He also asked "What is your biggest accomplishment so far?". The last impressive question that I remembered was "What is your vision of a day at work?" If I rate myself, I think I would have gotten a B. I was pretty rusty with interviews after a year in school and I could have done better. The good thing for me is that he did not ask any weird or funky questions.
Towards the end of the interview I was able to build a small rapport with him and he revealed to me some startling information. There are a total of 3 internship positions (this is not made known to us during application) yet there are 60 applicants applying from NUS and SMU. Out of the 60 applicants he shortlisted 15 of them to be interviewed.
I was 1 of them.
Of course I would like to know the reason why so I asked further. He told me I had a good cover letter with the relevant experiences explained in the cover letter. A learning lesson here: please write a good cover letter for your job applications. You never know when it will make a difference.
