Maya Kumazawa is a 3rd-year business major at the University of Victoria, Canada. After graduating from a junior college in Japan, she worked as a trade admin for four years, and then decided to study abroad in Canada. Since she always had a strong desire to use her overseas experience in Japan, she decided to participate in a four month internship at Apex. She was very reliable and always delivered high quality work.
Apex interns usually go through training with other new employees. For Maya, in addition to learning the recruitment process, she deepened her knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry as she was assigned to the Pharmaceutical Team. She also practiced sales pitches with top consultants, and finally started her daily activities.
In this article, we asked her the skills she was able to gain through the Apex Internship.
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
"Good internal/external communication is key for this job. Interns are always required to convey information accurately and promptly. Directors are very busy, so making sure that you understand what they want is very important. Interns are always taught not to assume and are encouraged to ask questions if something is not clear. Therefore, it was a great opportunity to develop listening and communication skills."
TEAMWORK
"Apex works as a team. When we introduce positions to candidates, Apex often has a weekly team meeting where we share our ideas to offer the most suitable positions to our candidates. Through exchanging information in teams and finding the best solution together, I developed great teamwork skills."
RESEARCH/ANALYTICAL SKILLS
"Interns mainly assist consultants with their executive searches and are asked to find candidates from the database. Through analyzing massive amounts of information and searching for candidates who have the career background and skills matching the requirements of positions, I developed strong analytical and research skills."
DETAIL ORIENTATION
"Interns format candidates’ CVs into Apex format. We needed to pay attention to every detail to make a well-branded and consistent CV, so it was a great opportunity to develop detail orientation skills."
We could hear her happy voice as she was able to gain lots of skills through the Apex internship. These skills can be used widely regardless of industry or career.
Maya finished her internship at the end of August and returned to the University of Victoria, again. We are very sad to say goodbye, but hopefully she will come back someday and show us how much she has grown professionally!