My Week as an Intern with people2people

My name is Phoenix Tea. I am a year 11 student in Canley Vale completing my Business Services VET course. The course requires me to complete a total 70 hours of work placement, to experience what it is like in commerce and industry. This is my final 35 hours that I will need to complete, to qualify to receive my Certificate II in Business Services. I have been working with people2people, and when I first received the news that my workplace would be located in the city, I was ecstatic, as I wanted to be in the CBD to experience how life as an office worker would be. Day one of my internship would be one of the very few days in my school life that I would have to wake up before 6:30am.

I awoke to the most horrible storm in Sydney for 18 years, with pouring rain all across the whole of NSW. I left home and walked to the train station and reloaded my Opal card for the week and waited for the train. As I arrived at Wynyard, I would suffer the first hurdle of the week. I had left the station through the wrong exit and had become lost in the city. The weather didn't help either, as it was pouring cats and dogs, but luckily I had my phone, which I used to eventually find my way to the office with a little help from two people outside a hotel opposite the office.

As I entered, I was introduced to Lisa Johnson, my supervisor for the week. Lisa showed me around the office and gave me the task of merging the data from a business people2people had acquired with people2people's database. This task would be the most boring task that I would have to do during the week. During the day, I was invited to observe an interview, which I enjoyed and found very interesting and helpful.

The second day, the weather wasn't great either. However, I wasn't required to continue to merge the data and instead scanned inactive files so that people2people would not need to store paper documents onsite. This I found to be far better than merging the data. Also, I got to view Sydney going through the very bad storm, while I was safe in a pretty cold office! This day I don't remember that much, because the merging affected my memory of the day. My third day would be a blur, as I did the exact same thing; however, I was able to view another interview. I also managed to somehow finish the two boxes filled with inactive files. With no more scanning to do, Lisa gave me the task of 'de-duplicating' candidates, which contained the same emails. The database wasn't as bad as merging the data, but it was harsh on my head, as it required me to think and not think at the same time, being a very easy but time consuming task. I managed to find ways to speed up this task so I could be more efficient and accurate.

As a note, there were around 400 to 500 duplicate candidate records, and, at the end of the business day, I managed to reduce that number to zero, and the storm was leaving Sydney around this time too! With the fourth day, I was ask to continue with the de-duplicating; however, this would not be like the former. It was no easy task, with the sheer amounts of duplicates totalling a huge number of 8368. I knew that I could not complete this task before I ended my work placement. This was kind of crushing my hopes of finishing every task which I was assigned.

The day went by pretty slowly while I was de-duping, but the occasional interview and the hour long lunch break provided the much needed relief and mental stimulation that allowed me to continue with the task. On my final day at people2people, I continued to try to do the de-duping. This was thankfully interrupted by the influx of interviews, where I got to observe and aid the interviewer with my personal opinion of the candidate. I enjoyed watching how everyone was so focused on their job to help recruit people. (I was not bribed to say this, and this is my honest opinion!)

Thank you everyone for the great time I have had at people2people, and thank you for putting up with having to help a student like me while having to do your own jobs at the same time! Thanks for all your hard work, Phoenix! It was great having you here!