My Internhip Experience (part 1)

Journal Entry #1 - May 2008:

Three years ago, I never would have imagined that someone would end up here reading about my internship experience at the Moore School of Business. When I was deciding what I should do for the future, I was looking at the Moore School application and thinking how interesting it would be to go to China, Japan, Germany or any other language track for a complete cultural immersion. For many days, I was thinking about what to choose for my future, about what's best for me.

So, I decided to go for the most challenging of all choices, the Chinese Track, having no previous Asian experience, background or language knowledge.

My name is Adrian Rusu. I'm originally from Romania and will guide you through my experience in China. I graduated with a telecomm engineering degree in Romania therefore I had no previous business school experience whatsoever. During my five years of college, I had the chance to be involved with different working or researching projects for companies in the consumer electronics industry, including one major research project in the mobile technology industry. From there, I went to Moore, began my IMBA and then studied Chinese for one year at UIBE in Beijing.

No matter where you are in the world, finding a good internship is not an easy task. Searching for an internship in China is no exception, but it definitely had a good result. The Chinese track has one advantage over the other language tracks, as we have a local company that will help us find an internship, try to solve any legal problems that may come up, and help us to find social and networking events in the city. This is a great relief especially for someone coming here for the first time.

On the one hand, this company helped me and my fellow trackers to find some internship opportunities both with Chinese and multinational companies. On the other hand, our school has excellent ties with some of the multinational companies in China and therefore was also very helpful in the internship search. This was the case with Apple. Even though this was the first time the company established a partnership with the Moore School, our Apple alumni have helped Moore students find internships in the past.

The Apple office in Beijing houses both Apple Asia, which includes all Asian countries except for Japan, and also Apple China, which are some of their most important operations in Asia. The office is located just across the street from the Silk Market in Beijing. In my apartment search, I succeeded in leasing an apartment just a ten-minute walk away. This situation is not very common for a city like Beijing, where a 45-minute commute to work is considered normal nowadays. I was definitely lucky.

The Apple APR (Apple Premium Reseller) Program is quite a new initiative (about two years old) within the company and helps bring the newest Mac and iPod products to customers in cities all over Asia by delivering on the promise of the Apple brand at the same time. The APR stores know everything about Mac and are the best places in town to test-drive all the Mac or iPod products. I am part of the Apple Asia APR Team, working as a Business Analyst, and this is the story of my internship.

In my next entry, I will talk about my internship in its initial stages and life in Beijing before the Olympics.