Terence Yeo was a Growth Marketing Intern at Ru9 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and a Programs Intern at HUBBA in Bangkok, Thailand - both in 2019. He is currently a Digital Marketing Associate at Cloudflare. Read on to find out about his GII experience!

What are some important skills/ mindsets that are important in an overseas internship?

I think when going on an overseas internship you really need to be adaptable and aware of your surroundings. In Vietnam, the locals try not to use their phone by the roadside or when they are on motorcycles. It is important to observe your surroundings to see how the locals behave so that you can act accordingly. Other times, you might need to rely on translation apps or you should actually try asking the local people. Sometimes, maybe the place you are looking for is not on listed Google, so asking the locals might even be better than doing a Google search.

Next, you have to be open-minded to new experiences. In Ho Chi Minh and Bangkok, if you were to travel by car or taxi, you would take forever to reach your destination. I have never sat on a motorbike before, but the traffic situation in HCMC and BKK made me realise that taking the Grab bike wasn’t such a bad option. I even tried driving in Vietnam and BKK!

Another good mindset to have is to train yourself to be more ‘chill’ or relaxed. In HCMC and BKK, the pace of life is slower compared to Singapore. You can feel the air of nonchalance when you hang out with the Vietnamese. For example, my whole street where I was living at had a blackout. There was no water heater, no lights, and the lifts weren’t working. What the locals did was that they started hanging out, they gathered at the rooftop to chit-chat and share their snacks and fruits. After I came back home, I can feel how tensed and stressed Singaporeans are. 
 

Tell us about your company & the industry it is in. What was it like working in a startup and what was your job scope on a day-to-day basis?

I was working in Ru9, a mattress e-commerce startup, in HCMC and I was the growth marketing intern over there. My job scope was to actually help the company perform in terms of search engine optimization, Facebook ads, and IG growth. I was helping them improve their search ranking on Google and also providing SEO consulting to the C-suite team.

After that, I went to Hubba Thailand. Hubba is in the co-working business and I was the programs intern. I was in the organizing team for the Techsauce Culture Submit where they're over 15,000 attendees. Besides being on the organizing team, I also helped to implement a CRM software and workflow. It was a very fun and very chill company. When I was there, I was very lucky to work with students from Ngee Ann and Temasek Poly. (They happen to be doing the same internship as me)
 

Tell us about your GII experience 

My GII experience was both amazing and challenging. GII has given me the chance to feel what it’s like to be a director/manager rather than an intern. 

When I was there for the overseas internships, my colleagues treated me as though I’m a full-timer and they give me the opportunity to handle multiple major projects. In Vietnam, my sole goal was to help the company improve its revenue, and I was told to do ‘whatever it takes to take the company to the next level. In BKK, one of the projects was to negotiate a 5-figure deal for an event management software.  I had the full autonomy to discuss the terms and decide on which software to eventually purchase. 

Tell us about a key takeaway you had from GII

This GII experience has allowed me to think critically and pick up skills that are not available in both classrooms and other local internships.