As a fast growing company with vast knowledge and expertise, we take pride in teaching young professionals about business. We accept eager interns from around the world to foster their skills that will be valuable in their upcoming careers.
Elise Benton will be a 4th year student in a business college at a university in the U.S. with a concentration in marketing. Elise was looking to gain marketing experience in a new environment and secured a two month long internship with Apex! She was able to work closely with the marketing team and many members of the industry teams where she developed her professional skills on several levels, with her main project being to create client decks for multiple teams while simultaneously working on smaller projects. Below she discusses her experience at Apex and what she learned from her time working here in Japan.
Apex Expertise
“Before starting my internship at Apex, I had done research on the company, but my research did not accurately prepare me for the experience of the internship ahead of me. From my searches, I had gathered that Apex was an impressive company, consisting of many areas of expertise with knowledgeable and credible members in each team, resulting in an award winning executive search firm. What I was not able to see in my research was just how impressive they are, and how much I would learn.”
By creating multiple client decks, Elise was able to work not only with the marketing team, but with multiple of the recruiter teams as well. She was tasked with gathering data and information from the teams in order to tailor the decks fit their individual needs and frequently met with the members from the pharmaceutical, medical device, legal, and supply chain and procurement teams, allowing her to meet and collaborate with many of the individuals here at Apex. Let’s hear what she thought about her time here as an intern.
Apex Teamwork
“As I worked with team members to create client decks for several of the teams, I was astonished at how dedicated each employee was to their work, and how much each individual had accomplished. The collaboration and willingness to help each other, especially me, someone who was not going to be at their company for a prolonged period of time, was something I have not seen anywhere else. Working with the Apex members consistently motivated me to put in 110% effort into the work I was doing, and just being in the office and hearing the progress that the surrounding people were making made it clear that giving it your all was the norm. Don’t get me wrong though, as productive as the company is, it was not a stressful experience. The team members’ understanding of their industries, clients, and candidates showed that each individual truly has both the clients and candidates best interests at heart at all times, and the same goes for the people that they work with; they ensured to help as much as possible and I was always given adequate time, materials, and feedback for all the work I did; not to mention appreciation!”
We are overjoyed that Elise was able to see what we all see in each other and what makes Apex such a great team! She was eager to work on the projects and just as eager to grow her professional skills, so let’s hear what she learned from the experience.
Apex Professionalism
“While interning at Apex, I gained a vast amount of knowledge that has greatly prepared me for my future career, potentially more than all my years of schooling combined. Through working with the team members, I learned how to collaborate with multiple people in different positions over a prolonged period of time to fine tune each presentation to fit the needs of each team. In addition to this, I learned how to communicate effectively through the most efficient and productive method for the particular task at hand, which allowed me to work and re-work the client decks to be able to show Apex’s strengths in a unique light for each area of expertise to truly showcase what Apex can do. Through this process, I was able to gain an understanding of how to properly manage my time in order to prioritize and allocate my time appropriately to certain aspects of the main project among smaller projects, such as working with another intern to input data into the Apex systems and pooling our industry research together to create meaningful insights. By balancing each team’s client presentations and the other projects, I was able to greatly improve my organizational skills through practice as well as my overall professionalism, including language usage, punctuality, confidence, and much more.”
While the internship accounted for part of the experience, her life in Japan was more than the time she spent in the office. Living and working in a new environment allows students to experience a different lifestyle, and promotes professional and personal growth to an extreme. Below Elise talks a bit about her experience in Japan as a whole.
Food in Japan
“The internship itself was wonderful, and the fact that it was in Japan made it that much better. Being able to work in a different environment only expedited my professional growth as well as my personal growth, as I have learned so much about and from the culture and life here. I could talk about all the wonderful sights I saw, or the history and modernity harmonizing on every street in Tokyo, but perhaps my favorite aspect of the trip was the food! Marketing is great but I think food is my true passion in life. At least eating it is; food is quite inexpensive here compared to the prices back home and yet I’ve still managed to spend the vast majority of my money on food, even through all the sightseeing, traveling and souvenir purchasing I have done. Everything is so incredibly tasty, and the variety itself is astonishing. Luckily, the Apex office is located in an area surrounded by many restaurants and I got excited every day knowing that I could always find something new that would of course be amazing or stop at one of my many favorite places, all having fantastic lunch specials that would blow anyone’s mind. For anybody who’s a convenience store fan, there is a 7-eleven, Family Mart, or Lawson’s on seemingly every block in Tokyo, also containing amazing ready to eat meals to go with large selections of every type of food.
All in all, my internship experience at Apex was extremely beneficial to my learning and understanding of what is to come in my career in marketing and having it in Japan allowed me to grow and experience new things on an entirely different level. Not only did I improve my skills as a working professional and gain knowledge about the field I’m going into, but I learned a lot about what I want out of my work and workplace as well. If you ever get the opportunity to intern at Apex, take it! You will be rewarded in more ways than you thought an internship ever could, and I’m both extremely grateful and proud to have had the chance to work at such a great company and even more grateful that I was able to partake in the program in Tokyo!”
Elise will return to Oregon to finish off her last year of schooling before entering the workforce the following year. Wherever that may be, we are happy to have been able to help her learn and grow as a young professional and are proud to know that she will use the skills and knowledge she acquired during her time at Apex anywhere she goes.
