Interning at Grab
Victoria Lee
Y4 Business, MNO & Marketing
Operations Executive
What is/was your internship role?
I was a Talent Acquisition (Tech) intern at Grab.
I was in charge of hiring entry to mid level tech staff, which includes Software Engineers, Data Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Machine Learning Engineers and more.
Share with us a brief background of your internship company.
Most people probably already know that Grab is Southeast Asia’s leading super app that provides services in areas such as Deliveries, Transportation, Financial Services and lots more.
What was your best takeaway/insight(s) from this internship?
My biggest insight would be to challenge yourself and take daring steps to develop your skills, even if you don’t know how you might do.
In Grab, I was given the opportunity to play a crucial role in organising an intensive Hiring Drive for Backend and Full Stack Software Engineers. Like any other intern, I was nervous that I would mess up especially since I lacked experience in Talent Acquisition for tech candidates.
In the end, the Hiring Drive was a success - Grab offered over 20 Software Engineers a position in Grab within a week. I learnt from this experience that I’ll never know how much I really can do unless I work hard and make an effort.
What was/were your biggest challenge(s) faced and how did you overcome it/them?
It was definitely the steep learning curve. As someone who is constantly confused by technology and has zero experience in it, I really had to step out of my comfort zone and push myself to learn technical terms to be able to hire engineers with over 10x my years of experience.
What would you do differently if you could go back to the start of the internship?
I would have taken the time to have more one-on-one conversations with mentors and managers.
Everyone in my team had a huge array of experiences, came from different backgrounds, and have different ideas of success for their career. It would have been great to be able to pick their brain to find out more about what drives them so that I can gain more perspectives and insights from HR professionals.
How has the internship value-added your prospective career in HR?
Because of the fantastic culture in Grab, it really reaffirmed my belief that HR was the career path that I want to pursue, and helped me understand the type of environment that I’m able to thrive in. I realised how important it is to choose a company that’s aligned with your values so that you and your team can work effectively towards a common goal.