George Wu

“As a University of Auckland international student with no local work experience, I thought participating in the virtual microinternship programme would be a great opportunity to get a glimpse of how business in New Zealand works. Luckily, the programme was inclusive of students based offshore due to border restrictions, so I was able to take part from China.

“I worked in a team of four, serving as business consultants for KPMG New Zealand to come up with a plan for their recruitment campaign next year. Working with a group of people who had only met virtually and were distributed across different time zones was quite challenging at the start, but after a few sessions we were able to find our sweet spot as a team.”

“I found workplace culture in New Zealand to be friendly and harmonious. Kiwis are willing to cooperate with each other and my team didn’t receive undue pressure from our clients or our mentor.

“One of the most unexpected things for me was learning the value of mentoring. My mentor was a recent graduate, whose communication skills and professionalism made him a good role model and encouraged me to be my best self. We were also given a broad set of coaching materials that will help my career development and serves as a starting point for me to explore the world of coaching – a helpful skill to have when I lead teams in the future.

“The microinternship definitely added to my first-hand experience of project management and system dynamics. It gave me experience on how to work remotely in a group setting, and enhanced my soft skills. I’m now more confident in leading a distributed team, writing reports and doing business consulting.”