How & Why:

At the beginning when we were told to choose our internships I had initially chosen Emirates NBD as my first choice being a business student. However, all the slots were filled up so I went with my second option which was Alshaya. I didn’t know much about retail, so I was looking forward to a new experience.

Firm:

The firm I was placed in was the H&M head store in Mall of the Emirates . H&M along with many other retail stores is a part of the Alshaya group.

What I did:

I involved myself in as many activities as I could. On our first day of attendance we were told to price the items in the store. This was extremely foreign to me as I had no background in retail. However when they told us how to go about it we really enjoyed ourselves. We were also given a bunch of other activities such as changing-room duty, attending customers, helping fill out surveys, tagging sale items and more.

Did it meet my expectations?

Going into the internship I didn’t know what exactly to expect. I thought we would get to know about the framework of the business and how they manage inventory hence I was surprised when we were asked to dust shelves and arrange shoes. So, quite bluntly it feel a little short of my expectations.

How has this impacted my professional and personal development?

More than my professional development the internship has helped me develop my personal development. I learned how to become more self-efficient, become more responsible and help me manage time.

Recommendations:

Although it didn’t meet my expectations entirely, the internship did prove to be effective when it came to my personal development. Career-wise it proved to be rather irrelevant. So at the end, I would recommend to take this internship for personal development skills rather than something career related.

Things I liked:

I in fact did enjoy a lot of the internship. For example the staff that worked there were extremely warm and welcoming and helped us around a lot. I enjoyed working beside them and the friends I made at the internship. /p>

Things I did not like:

I did not like the way some of the department managers treated us. I found some of them to be rude and indifferent to us. For example on the first day we were supposed to be taught about the rules and regulations of the company including the fire exits. This wasn’t done until the last day of the internship. Moreover when we first joined Alshaya headquarters for the induction we found that most of the induction was irrelevant to us and it was mainly for the new employees. We found that to be disorganized. Even on the day we actually joined H&M nobody knew anything about interns or the internship.