Internship Experience Report: Learning from Practical Aspects of Education

The report reflects on the experience of a six-month internship at a hotel and the skills learned from it. The internship was considered an important part of the course completion and relevant to experiencing the practical aspect of education. The report covers the departments experienced, the skills learned, and the career development plan. The major skills learned were effective communication, management, professionalism, conflict management, customer service, marketing tools, and social media marketing. The report concludes with the short, mid, and long-term goals of the student.

Running Head: INTERNSHIP 0
INTERNSHIP
Student name
1-24-2019

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Training description.........................................................................................................................3
Reflection.........................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References......................................................................................................................................10
Appendix: Survey..........................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
Training is an important aspect while gaining knowledge from any course, as the
theoretical knowledge gained from the course must be applied in order to acknowledge the
practical aspects of studies. The report will be considering the experience of training from the
hotel industry and will be presented through reflection, in order to gain learning from personal
experience. The internship was helpful in learning various things, which cannot be learned
through the theoretical education itself (Dosser & Nicol, 2016).

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Training description
The internship training was for six months, in a hotel, “Easy Lodges Berlin” at Columbia
dam, it is one of the cheapest and affordable places to stay at, moreover a fun place to stay. Full
time-based internship, where I have been assigned to the various departments in the back office.
There were twenty workers working, through which it can be said that the organization is not
working on a very large scale. Except for the front office, the major department in the back
office were management, finance department, marketing department, human resource
department, and production department. The departments I worked with were management,
finance department, and the marketing department (Fook, 2018).
Reflection
Before initiating my internship, I was not sure if this training of six months could be
helpful in my career or not even knowing the reason that is it necessary for the course
completion. Moreover, since this would be my first experience in the working field, I was very
nervous, and not confident enough, if I would be able to adjust to the organization environment,
and will be able to do what I would be asked to do. When I got to know that the organization is
hotel industry, I was not able to make up my mind that it will be able to help me in
accomplishing my future career goals or not (Fattore & Vittandi, 2018).
As I joined the organization, I got to know that my boss Mr. Christian Conrad, is a kind
person, who was very helpful, he talked to me and made me feel comfortable, and gave me the
brief about the organization’s policies, rules, and regulations. Moreover, he introduced me to the
co-workers. The departments I worked in were marketing, where my job role was to keep the

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Facebook page of the organization and the website updated. Another department I took
experience was accounting, where the money reaching to the bank was my duty at the end of the
day at times. Moreover, management department was also experienced by me, where the
organizing task was done by me while helping in events like Zumba dance, which the company
like all the employees to participate every Friday. When I was working with the marketing team,
the major stakeholder I interacted with were my team members, with whom I had to coordinate
the work, so there is no duplicity of work. Initially, my boss took training to make me learn
certain things to accomplish my task. The training turned out to be helpful, and as I mentioned,
in marketing I had to update the sites. I interacted with the customer, where I learned how to
convince the customer, communicate with them, and to how to persuade the customer to visit the
hotel (Mann, 2017).
I tried to learn to my maximum, and tried to handle the maximum possible work I can, so
that the learning from the internship is worthy, and I can use those learning in my future. The
experience while interacting with the customers was very good, although first interaction with
the customer was not that good, as the person was having some issue with the dates of booking
he made. However, he posted that on the website, and I was asked to handle that customer query.
However with time, I gained the learning through those experiences, and after some days I was
easily able to communicate with customers, and able to attract new customer at social media.
Any negative feedback on social media was to be considered as useful feedback, and I personally
contacted to those individuals, while understanding their expectations, and suggesting the
management to improve that particular aspect of the hotel. Another issue that was faced while
gaining experience was an issue of technology. Since, I was supposed to handle the website, the
technical issue was there, for which the website was not working appropriately, and the

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customers were not able to reach to us through the website. For that situation, I handled the
customers through different sources like through phone calls. While working with the accounting
team, some problems occurred, there was a conflict occurred in the team and all the work was
disturbed. This was a problematic situation, where through the effective conflict management,
the leader of the team handled the situation (Schon, 2017).
After the completion of my internship, the major skills that are learned by me were
 Effective communication – one of the major skills that I learned from the experience was
communicating with different peoples around the organization in an effective way, so as
to make your point clear and specific to another party. Moreover, it is important to be
kind and use appropriate language and body language while communicating with
different people.
 The professionalism while interacting with the team members and the stakeholders
outside the business – the major skill that I learned, which as a student, I was not able to
adapt earlier, which I learned from the organization. The importance of every aspect in
the professional world was learned, the way of interaction with different stakeholders like
behaviors within the team and outside the team.
 Time management – managing time is very important, “the time is money,” is the old
saying, and I realized the value of time from this experience. The completion of the task
and through management department that I worked in, the time management was the
major learning. The way to prioritize the work, which is most important and which work
need urgent focus, and which work can be done later on was developed through the grid
study.

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 Conflict management – from my team leader, I understand and learn how to handle the
conflict within the team. This could be one of the major reason for the lower productivity
of any department, this needs to be handled on the priority basis and using a proper
structure
 Customer service – the customers were the major stakeholders with whom I interacted
the most in my internship and handled various issues they faced. Therefore, providing the
best service to the customers and the way the customers can be convinced were learned
from the internship.
 Marketing tools – I used various marketing tools to attract customers. Some of them were
the sales promotion while providing the discount offers and the coupons to the customers.
Moreover, the way of advertising was also learned within the training
 Social media marketing – this was my major job role, that is to handle the Facebook
page, which is one of the major platforms for social media marketing. This was my major
learning through training, as digital marketing is one of the increasing scope and
opportunity for me in the future (Tillema, 2000)
One of the major experience while handling the website and Facebook page, was a
technical issue with the website, where I had an opportunity to learn about the web
development while working with the web designer of the company. I learned some of the
major aspects of the websites and how to control those things. This learning will be helpful in
my desired future career and courses at the Macromedia. My career development plan
includes following goals
Short range goals (the goals for less than one year)

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 Working on a Website – the major experience of working with the websites, and handling
the webpages is my goals that I was able to accomplish with this experience to a large
extent. As the responsibility of website handling and updating was mine for the last six
months of the training
 Management – while working with an organization and helping in organizing Zumba for
all the workers on Friday, was the experience, where managing things was the key and
the skills that I have learned, and will be using in near future (University, 2018)
Mid-range goals (1-3 years)
 Macromedia courses – this is the major career objective, which is to be accomplished in
two years, and I am willing to learn from the courses of Macromedia. The learning from
the experience of time management, managing things, and website handling would be
helpful for me to accomplish this goal in near future.
Long range goals (3- 5 years)
 Marketing manager – in long range, I would like to become a marketing manager in a
well reputed corporate company. For which the training helped me in learning the basic
elements of digital marketing by handling the website and social media platform for the
company. This experience would be helpful in understanding the marketing in a practical
aspect, and I would be able to perform better in my next experience in marketing field, as
I have learned from experience and mistakes. I have learned the theoretical aspect at my
university that is through Macromedia courses and from this experience, the
implementation of the theoretical knowledge would help me accomplishing this long-
range career goal.

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Conclusion
From the report, it can be concluded that the experience with the six-month internship at
the hotel was reflected in a structured way. The training was considered as an important part of
the course completion and also relevant to experience the practical aspect of education and from
the organization working. The departments I experienced were the marketing department,
management department, and finance department. I learned various skills from the internship,
which would be helpful in my career development.
This was my first experience in the working field, I was very nervous, and not confident
enough that I would be able to adjust to the organization environment, and will be able to do
what I would be asked to do before going for the internship. As I entered the organization and
start working, my nervousness was gone within a few weeks. I was trained, and I was able to do
the work. Although there were issues that came into the way of the flow of work, through those
issue, I gained more learning.
After the experience, the major learning that I gained were effective communication,
management, professionalism, conflict management, customer service, marketing tools, and
social media marketing. These learning would be helpful in accomplishing the future career
goals that I have developed. The major long term goals included working with a corporate
company as marketing manager, for this, the major things learned were management,
professionalism, and effective communication with a different stakeholder that will helpful for
me in accomplishing this goal. Moreover, the mid-term goals included Macromedia courses,
which I had to accomplish within 2 years, as it is an essential stage for the long term goal
achievement. For this, the experience from the internship, where I was able to work with the

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website as well, and learned digital marketing, would be helpful in accomplishing this goal.
Moreover, the short term goals that I have planned to accomplish within six months to one year
were learning management skills, and working with websites and social media platforms, which
I have almost accomplished while gaining the experience from the internship.

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References
Dosser, I., & Nicol, J. (2016). Understanding reflective practice. Nursing Standard, 30(36).
Fattore, M., & Vittandi, G. (2018). A least squares approach to latent variables extraction in
formative–reflective models. Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 120, 84.
Fook, J. (2018). REFLECTIVE MODELS AND FRAMEWORKS IN PRACTICE .
Methodologies for Practice Research: Approaches for Professional Doctorates, 1, 57.
Mann, S. (2017). Reflective practice in English language teaching: Research-based principles
and practices. London: Routledge.
mindtools. (2018). Gibbs' Reflective Cycle. Retrieved from mindtools.:
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/reflective-cycle.htm
Schon, D. (2017). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. London:
Routledge.
Tillema, H. (2000). Belief change towards self-directed learning in student teachers: immersion
in practice or reflection on action. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(5-6), 575-591.
University, O. B. (2018). Reflective writing; About Gibb's Reflective Cycle. Retrieved from
https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/upgrade/study-skills/reflective-writing-gibbs/

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Appendix: Survey
This survey was taken from my co-workers in the organization, as how they feel I contributed to
the company. The 360 degree feedback would be taken
Q1. How likely would you recommend the personnel to a colleague?
a. Very likely
b. Likely
c. Moderate
d. Unlikely
e. Extremely unlikely
Q2. How often the employee/intern was late to the organization?
a. More than 5 times a month
b. 3 to 5 times a month
c. 1-3 times a month
d. Not late
Q3. Is the working hours of the employee completed every day? If not, how often did it was not
competed?
a. Yes
b. No
c. If no, how often ______
Q4. How much attention did the employee gave to details while working?

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a. High attention
b. Moderate attention
c. Little attention
d. No attention paid
Q5. How often the employee has crossed the deadline, or conducted any mistake?
a. More than 5 times a month
b. 3 to 5 times a month
c. 1-3 times a month
d. Not late
Q6. Is your employee admit their mistakes?
a. Yes
b. No
Q7. How well the employee communicated with other stakeholders?
a. Extremely well
b. Very well
c. Not so well
d. Not well at all
Q8. How quickly is the employee adjusted to new environment?
a. Extremely quickly
b. Very quick
c. Moderate

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d. Not so quick
Q9. To what extent the intern was helpful in organizing and managing work?
a. Extremely helpful
b. Very helpful
c. Not so helpful
d. Not helpful at all
Q10. How well is the intern/employee work with customers?
a. Extremely well
b. Very well
c. Not so well
d. Not well at all