Cheryl Ho
Y4 Business, MNO and Finance
Head of Operations
What is/was your internship role?
I am an intern in the Strategic Talent Management (STM) Team at Shopee. The team is part of the bigger people team doing talent programs and engagement.
My role as a STM intern involves the end-to-end of talent recruitment and development programs such as selection, onboarding, execution of program activities and community building, as well as, other ad-hoc engagement projects.
Share with us a brief background of your internship company.
Shopee is a fast-growing MNC in the Information, Communications & Technology (ICT) industry and part of the bigger parent company, Sea, in the digital entertainment, e-commerce and digital financial services space seeking to better the lives of consumers and small businesses with technology.
What was your best takeaway/insight(s) from this internship?
One of the best takeaways is being able to work closely with my team to support talents and witness their growth and development.
Being in the tech industry, the company is always on the lookout for talents which makes the work I do in Talent Management much more exciting. In my internship, I got to work on two talent recruitment programs, one being the Management Associate Program and another Apprentice Program for interns.
My favourite project was to kickstart community building initiatives for talents in the Global Leaders Program across the region. I had the opportunity to organise a Global Village for talents in which we put them into teams to set up a “virtual” cultural showcase about the various offices and the e-commerce space. It was really heartening to see everyone interacting, sharing with each other how life is like working in the office and most importantly insights about how the company operates! All in all, it makes me feel I am shaping the culture for these key talents.
What was/were your biggest challenge(s) faced and how did you overcome it/them?
The biggest challenge was trying to learn as much as I can during the short span of time. Given that everything was so fast-paced, I struggled to balance between what I had to do and what I wanted to do. To overcome this, I learned about the time management matrix during one of the training sessions, which essentially categorised tasks into 4 quadrants which I found to be very helpful. The key here is to invest the most time on ‘Important’ and ‘Not urgent’ also known as “quality” tasks quadrant which can bring out positive effects, reduce time spent in other quadrants, and overall become more effective. I urge all of you to give it a try!
What would you do differently if you could go back to the start of the internship?
Shopee is known for their strong learning and development (L&D) culture which also means interns have access to a wide variety of training programs and courses. There are also many fun virtual internship activities lined up for interns.
Focusing on the quality quadrant, I would have taken advantage of these courses and participated in more activities to build more relationships and friendships during my time spent there!
How has the internship value-added your prospective career in HR?
It has definitely given me insights into an aspect of Talent Management that I did not know before, being part of developing and enabling talents to achieve overall business objectives can be incredibly fulfilling. I also picked up important stakeholder management, communication and facilitation skills which I believe are important for aspiring HR professionals like you and me!