internshipportfolio

[internshipportfolio]

Overall reflections

Where do I even begin?  

From the moment I had found out I had been offered the internship role with Motorsport Australia, I knew that I was about to put in every ounce of effort and commitment I had in me to be the best intern I could be, as well as shine a positive light over myself for opportunities going forward.  

From day one, it was overwhelming knowing I was exactly where I had strived to be for the past 12-months, but the support shown from the organisation and the welcoming environment I had walked into was the perfect way to begin what I knew was going to be an amazing experience.  

Along the way, I faced many challenged including adjusting to writing style, interviewing athletes and officials over the phone and in person as well as working within my weaknesses and still try to produce high quality content for the organisation. It is a great feeling knowing I faced each and every one of these challenges with a great attitude and willingness to learn from my mistakes I may have made along the way. This now allows me to enter any organisation and be ready for the new challenges thrown my way and how to react when the time comes.  

I am to this day still very grateful of the opportunities I was given throughout the internship program, being able to attend two events with one being interstate was a chance I never realised I would be getting, and I put that down to the trust put in me by the organisation and my willingness to adapy to any situation I am put into.  

Although throughout the experience I was somewhat confident I was fitting in and producing a high-quality standard of work, it was comforting to know that the feeling was mutual with media team around me. The two evaluations provided me good insight on how they really thought I was performing, and with the large majority of the feedback being positive I know that it was all down to the hard work I put in each and every day I was in the office or working from home.  

As mentioned, multiple times, my biggest highlight was the trip to Adelaide for The Bend AutoFest aa this provided me with the opportunity to showcase myself on a professional and personal level with the team around me. Getting to know the team on a more personal level made the whole experience much easier and provided me with better opportunities to talk to them about the whole experience and more.

I truly believe I have come out of the other end of the internship program a better person on a professional and personal level. When I chose to approach Holmesglen about potentially joining the course, the internship program and partners was a big selling point and was something I had worked towards from day one. Knowing I have now finished the program and have absolutely no regrets and plenty of positive moments to look back on makes me very proud of myself.  

[internshipportfolio]

Reflection on my supervisor evaluations and how these align with your future career professional

Overall, I was pleased with my initial feedback in the first of two intern evaluations that came through at the 100-hour mark of the program. At the time, I had a couple of doubts in my writing and adjusting to the style, but this was one of the first things mentioned in the evaluation as an area of improvement and numbing down the expectation, which helped me relax a little bit going forward.  

From the beginning, it was always a goal for me to have a good attitude towards all my work, no matter how annoying of a task it may be and for that to be mentioned throughout my stint to date was very pleasing. This was one of those situations where I was unsure of whether my effort was paying off as entering an organisation with people you have only recently met provides barriers due to the fact that they don’t your usual traits and where you are putting in the extra hard yards to be a better employee. The other main standout in my first evaluation was my video skills being recognised as sufficient content although I made it very clear that it was a weakness of mine from the beginning.  

Characteristics of the job and characteristics of the work environment (in particular, learning opportunities, supervisor support, and organizational satisfaction) are the best predictors of internship satisfaction” (D’Abate et al. 2009).

To my surprise, my proof-reading of stories was highlighted as the main area to improve going forward. This shocked me due to the fact that it was my first time hearing this, but when I looked back on my stories to date and considered the changes made throughout that I originally questioned, I took the advice and used the criticism as motivation going forward.  

When the time came to read my second lot of evaluations, I was nervous but slightly confident that I would receive good feedback due to my hard work in the Adelaide trip in October. I was over the moon when I saw that I got the maximum mark possible, and while reading the feedback and seeing that I was ‘without a doubt the best intern the organisation had ever had’, I then knew all my hard work had paid off.  

I received an ‘exceptional’ mark for all areas aside from analytical skills and leadership, where they sat under the ‘very good’ label. Although this is still a pleasing result, it is something I will keep in mind in future opportunities to try and continue growing as a person and an employee.  

It was obvious that the largest contributing factor to my mark was the effort I put in during my trip to Adelaide, which led to a high standard of work for the organisation while I was exposed to a brilliant opportunity other interns don’t usually receive. The best part about this was the fact that the part I enjoyed most is also the area where I impressed. This all but confirms I am exactly where I always thought I belonged.  

All my marks and feedback perfectly align with my goals for the future and provide me with great references for any opportunities that may pop up. I am confident I can continue to work at the level I did as an intern and even lift to a greater standard as I further familiarise myself within the industry.  

Reference:  

D'Abate, Youndt, M. A., & Wenzel, K. E. (2009). Making the most of an internship. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 8(4), 527–539. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMLE.2009.47785471

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Career aspirations and goal setting

Before I started the internship, I had a decent idea of where I wanted to end up in 12 months' time, and that was working for Motorsport Australia at the completion of the program. While I still have this goal, I have a new perspective of my potential future career and am excited at the opportunities that will present itself in coming time.  

As the internship program came to a close, I was curious as to whether I had made enough of an impression to be considered for a full-time role with the organisation. As I was told there wasn’t any current openings for a new employee, I am excited at the potential of joining the team at some point in the near or far future, forcing me to consider other options going forward.  

While gaining unmatched experience during my time with the organisation, I crave the opportunity to build on my portfolio and expose myself to even more challenges to grow as a person in general. This includes working for organisations I may not have first considered and taking risks I may not have considered taking before I begun the internship program.  

As my current future is up in the air after completed my last handful of assessment for my degree, goal setting has become a valuable part of my transition into the real-life working environment. Minimising the time-frame of my goals is the first step, and having a six-month plan of getting a job in any industry to continue to grow helps shape my approach going forward. This is all knowing full well that opportunities will present themselves when the time is right as long as I put in the hard work from day one.

My long-term goals have remained the same over time, which is building my profile in the motorsport industry to hopefully one day be able to travel across the world working with Formula One. While it may sound like a fantasy little kids make up to later realise they need to be more realistic, I stand by my goal as it inspires me to continue to work, knowing full well that the hard work does not stop at the conclusion of my studies, but will likely continue throughout a vast majority of my work life going forward.  

An important part of moving forward post study is contently updating my LinkedIn profile and keeping an up-t-date version of my resume ready at all costs. Because as I mentioned earlier, you never know when an opportunity will present itself. Other members of the media team at Motorsport Australia constantly advised me to use my work as a tool to promote myself going forward, whether this be on LinkedIn or on my personal portfolio it is an important asset to have to impress future employers.

“Students' career goal commitment is associated with all four proactive career behaviors (career planning, skill development, career consultation and network building)” (Clements & Kamau, 2018).

Reference:  

Clements, & Kamau, C. (2018). Understanding students' motivation towards proactive career behaviours through goal-setting theory and the job demands-resources model. Studies in Higher Education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 43(12), 2279–2293. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2017.1326022

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Achievements and milestones

When I look back on my internship experience, it was defined by the milestones I achieved along the way. Big or little, all my achievements made me feel a sense of belonging and fulfilled many desires I had before walking in on my first day.  

One of my goals was to build the confidence within the organisation to trust me with time-dependent tasks, including writing articles in short time periods and in particular working in a live-environment at the two events I was lucky enough to attend. Gaining the trust of the media team was my first goal because I believed everything would start to fall into place once I gained that trust I would be treated and feel like I was part of the team and making a difference.  

Once the first milestones felt like it had been completed, the next big moment was being invited to the second trip in South Australia. This was an unplanned and unexpected milestone, but stands out to me as one of the biggest and most important ones as I was so excited to go home and tell everybody about the incredible opportunity I have been offered. I had also never been to Adelaide before and in the Virgin Business lounge, so that ticked off another personal goal of mine throughout the experience.  

The Adelaide trip will always be labeled as my greatest achievement during my time at Motorsport Australia. Being trusted enough to look after my own racing series alongside one of the other team members gave me the opportunity to really show my worth and prove I am work ready for future opportunities. While the weekend was extremely busy, it was smoothly operated and we successfully achieved everything we wanted to for the series and more.  

If employees perceive higher degree of trust from a manager, the degree of their job satisfaction and dedication is perceived higher” (Gill, 2008).  

This also put me in situations I was unaware I would be in at the beginning of the internship, including on-camera interviews with drivers throughout the weekend. This has been stated as one of my biggest challenges but also one of my proudest moments of the internship. It was extremely satisfying completing the task without any major hiccups and gave me the confidence to be thrown into situations and come out the other side a better intern.  

My final milestones came during a challenging article I was writing on a partnership extension between a racing series and their major sponsor, a story which had little context and even less information in front of me to make the story passable. As I did not have other team members beside me at the time, I made the decision to track down a phone number of the series owner to have a conversation about the partnership. Whilst it may be a small detail, it was something the organisation were very surprised and happy with, claiming no other intern has taken the initiative to do.  

All these experiences allowed me to expand my resume and build on my LinkedIn profile over time, promoting myself better for future opportunities and giving myself the confidence that I am good enough to succeed in a fast-paced work environment.  

Reference:  

 Gill. (2008). The role of trust in employee-manager relationship. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 20(1), 98–103. https://doi.org/10.1108/09596110810848613

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Challenges I faced

As mentioned earlier on in the portfolio, my biggest challenge at the start of the internship was adjusting to the writing style in the first handful of articles I produced. I was constantly being reassured of my good work which gave me the confidence to keep going but I admittedly took the changes to heart when I first noticed them.  

When writing articles going forward, it was always in the back of my mind that some of my work would be changed and I had to find a way to reduce the number of changes needed in the final product. It was not something I could whip-up overnight, but I eventually used a side-by-side analysis of the changes in previous articles and other articles written online by other staff members to find my own strengths and weaknesses within my writing. I noticed I needed to add a bit more color, as my original content was starting to feel dry due to the amount of concentration given on getting the facts right first. Another point I starting working on was the structure of my articles as well as the confidence within my writing, for example, making it seem like I know exactly what I am talking about and not had just heard of the guy in the article an hour beforehand.  

My second challenge came later on in the internship, being lucky enough to travel with the team to Adelaide for The Bend AutoFest I was presented with many challenges but the interviewing aspect seemed to strike me the most.  

I was always happy to do interviews and was never going to say no, but I was struggling to find the confidence within my questions during the buildup to the interviews themself. On the opening day of track action, I did not expect to be doing any until later on in the day, so in my mind I had plenty of time to pick the brain of the media team and gain some confidence in the questions I was asking. At the time, I was anxious when I found out the interviews had been pushed forward and we were doing it ‘right now’ instead. I had to make up questions on the spot but I managed to handle the first couple of them okay.  

As the day and the event went on, using a team member I was assigned to work with throughout the weekend I was able to ask multiple questions and use him as reassurance for what I might have been about to ask. He gave me positive and negative feedback throughout and did not mind if I restarted or took a second to prepare myself for the take.  

“Being thrown in at the deep end is a test of communication skills” (Harris, 2015).

I ended up doing these interviews multiple times across the weekend, but the new found confidence also followed me back to the office where I would start interviewing people over the phone for article quotes, something I was also anxious about at the start but was able to get over the hump by being thrown in the deep end.  

Reference:  

 Harris. (2015). Starting out - Being thrown in at the deep end was a test of my communication skills. Nursing Standard, 29(31), 31–31. https://doi.org/10.7748/ns.29.31.31.s29

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Becoming an effective team member and contributor

I have always been the type of person to ask a lot of questions, and while I didn’t want to bother the other employees too much, I did not hesitate in using their expertise to help me learn new skills or adapt and understand their way of proceedings. Even though I often followed my question with an apology for asking so many, the team were more than happy to help me with whatever I needed and it gave them a chance to understand my strengths and weaknesses as well as myself getting to understand theirs.

“Asking questions has the potential to increase the engagement of multidisciplinary team members and learning opportunities” (Seung Min et al. 2021).

I would often ask the others questions based on not only the direct work I was undertaking but theirs as well, and how the processes work when they work from home, in the office and when they leave on trips top events around the country. It was also a good opportunity to create personal relationships and network myself within the organisation so both parties would be comfortable talking to each other in the future.  

The many ways my co-workers would help me is by sending me previous examples of work, and ways I can adapt to make mine reach the quality that is expected of me. I found this helped many times throughout my internship but mostly when I was doing video editing, as it was an obvious weakness of mine and I had initially struggled to understand the first editing task given to me so the other staff were able to provide me with the exact product I needed to create while assuring me it was a stress-free environment and there is no need to rush on the task.  

As it got later and later into the internship, I found that I was starting to feel more a part of the team as I was being involved in coffee and lunch runs as well as having more casual conversations throughout a work day. This helped me become a more efficient member of the team as it gave me a greater responsibility to produce the quality of work expected of me because I now felt like I was not just working for myself and the organisation as a whole, but the people who are around me as well.  

In saying so, the feeling was even greater at events as the environment starting becoming more fast paced. When I attended my first event at Sandown, I was doing similar work but because it was all happening live and in front of us my pace needed to be on point. Since I felt like I had built part of a relationship with the whole team it was then made easy to adjust and utilise them whilst working in an environment I was not used to.

Reference:  

Han, Parkes, P., & Wang, S. (2021). Assessing "How to Ask Questions" - Response to: Is Asking Questions on Rounds a Teachable Skill? [Letter]. Advances in Medical Education and Practice, 12, 93–94. https://doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S299732

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Finding my feet in the internship: induction, and completing initial tasks

From the moment I walked in the door I was welcomed by Motorsport Australia with open arms, I had already met two of the team but I was then introduced to the rest of the media team as well as being given a tour of the building whilst meeting every individual worker inside. I was unable to remember most of the names and their roles but it gave me a good indication of the characters I'll be working around and the confidence to be able to walk up to them and ask them any questions or queries if needed later on in the internship.  

My initial tasks for day one was to read through a range of content that Motorsport Australia had done in the past to get used to their writing style, delivery systems and competitions that they cover on a daily basis. I was reading articles, magazines and even watching shows they had produced for Seven Plus for the rally and off-road series. I found this rather interesting because there were so many series I did not realize existed and by the time I did start writing I had half an idea of what I was writing about.  

My first article was about a Western Australian rally driver who had won his first state championship, which I then had to use the angle of his momentum heading into the upcoming round of the Australian Rally Championship. I was understandably nervous to send through my first article on my first day at the organisation and I am convinced I read over it and changed it dozens of times before actually sending it through, but it was a great relief when I finally had the courage to press send.   

The initial reaction to the article was good, I was told I did many things well and it only needed a couple of changes to adjust to their writing system before it goes up online. This was the only task I had done aside from the readings at the beginning of the day so I was excited to go home and say I had an article posted online for the first time. But when I got home and read it, I was a little surprised with what I saw. Whilst the majority of the article was my work, all the wording had been changed around with a few extra key details added. Whilst I was not offended, I was shocked because I was told I did very well, but then it got changed completely where it didn’t even feel like my work.  

In response to this, I asked my supervisor Michael what I could have done better and he continued to say it was great and that changes are a normal part of the process before it gets published, reassuring me by claiming it still happens to him every time as well.  

“Learning from errors and near misses and balance between individual and systems responsibility” (Fischer et al. 2006).

My initial tasks were enjoyable with an appropriate amount of stress added as well but it set me up nicely for the upcoming challenging I endure in the coming months.  

Reference:  

 Fischer, Mazor, K. M., Baril, J., Alper, E., DeMarco, D., & Pugnaire, M. (2006). Learning from mistakes. Factors that influence how students and residents learn from medical errors. Journal of General Internal Medicine : JGIM, 21(5), 419–423. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1525-1497.2006.00420.x

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My preparedness prior to commencing my internship and how I assimilated into the organisation's culture

As I entered my final year of studies at Holmesglen, I knew I had to put in a lot of extra work to get where I wanted to be, hence why I started volunteering as much as I could to gain more and more experience within the industry leading up to the internship program. As at the time I was volunteering with AusCycling, and later offered an internship role with the organisation, I felt more prepared than ever to tackle any challenge that I would be faced with.  

As the opportunity popped up with Motorsport Australia not long after, my readiness slowly started to decline as a complete change or organisation and sporting culture was required, but this was the one particular organisation I always had at the top of my list, and I was ready to commit and put the work in.  

From day one, I was able to understand the culture or the organisation by being introduced to everyone in the building, and in particular the media team I would be working alongside for the next couple of months. I was relieved to see that they were all very chilled out but very committed to their work at the same time. I immediately knew that I would be able to connect with the team on a professional level, but also on a personal level if the opportunity were to ever arise.  

“Moderation analysis suggests that employees with high levels of motivation have more stable job satisfaction compared to their low-motive counterparts” (Breaugh et al. 2018.)

Technically, my first day involved a lot of reading and studying on how the organisation goes by their work and what they cover, what I had read was not a surprise and it was nice knowing that I believed I could produce work of similar quality. Mentally, I was ready to take on any challenge put forward to me and was eager to make a difference and show I am work-ready.  

Reference:   Breaugh, Ritz, A., & Alfes, K. (2018). Work motivation and public service motivation: disentangling varieties of motivation and job satisfaction. Public Management Review, 20(10), 1423–1443. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2017.1400580