Vision Factories business strategy is centered around social media & FB ad courses. Since the start of the pandemic, the company has lost a significant % of the revenue since the courses cannot be offered and cannot take place in the office. Together with my supervisor, we have come up with the idea to approach people individually for example via LinkedIn who might potentially be interested in these courses. Therefore I agreed to create a file for the employees who will offer the courses. In this file, the employees will get an overview of how much every single course costs how and where to approach people who to contact if any questions arise. This way I hope to stimulate my colleagues to give them clear guidelines and help the company as much as possible in these rough times. Together with Piotr my supervisor we agreed that the courses will be offered via teams this way the candidate will get the opportunity to show their face if they want and can turn the microphone on and off whenever they want this is also great asset since they will get the freedom to speak out loud when something is unclear or whenever they will be in need of a break.

I have also realized that writing so much these days is also contributing to developing my analytical skills in writing. This was one of the t-shaped horizontal skills I wish to develop by the end of my internship of 10 weeks. The use of Grammarly has also helped me a lot to develop my skills. Besides I have also been nominated by my peers from the breakfast club to participate in a 5 km run donate €5 and nominate the other five people. Money raised from the cars will go to 250 families in Kenya to provide them and their children with three meals a day.

Today I created an internship advertisement on the companies’ Facebook regarding a marketing position. I received a poster which I asked for yesterday from my colleagues from the marketing department. See poster below:

I am very happy and satisfied with the result. I requested a poster that has the company’s logo on it, the firm’s email address, link to the official website, and a happy vibe with clear headlines! 

I have posted the advertisement on Facebook and asked my supervisor to have a look at it and give me some feedback. Piotr was very enthusiastic about the post and asked me if there is any chance that we could do the same for some other departments in the company such as finance for example. Which I will have a look at.

I have realized that working with different people is very frustrating in its own way. As you have to use your time efficiently and effectively. So to meet some of the deadlines agreed on earlier you really have to keep asking your colleagues on their progress since you rely on their work. 

I was very excited to post my own first job offering! See below:

My alarm went off at seven o’clock in the morning. I had my breakfast, worked-out, and opened up my laptop to start my day off. At half-past ten I have had a meeting scheduled with the crisis management team from the vision factory. I have already informed my supervisor about my idea to offer an internship online/from home. Together we have discussed all of the details and also discussed which of the departments we can offer for an online internship. The team was very excited about my idea and gave me positive feedback which made me feel proud of myself.

The conclusion was to start promoting the marketing department as an online internship, as it is the most wanted and interesting department for many young people.

I have created/written a job description for the advertisement and asked a colleague from the marketing department to create a nice poster.

The idea is to have the job offer ready somewhere this week before Friday. This way the marketing department can start to promote it through various sources and generate as many views as possible in the target group.

This morning I accompanied my mom during her scheduled meeting at the UMC hospital. My mom is 41 years old and already lost 40 percent of her hearing, me or my sister needs to be there during her meeting in case she might not understand something important or even worst misunderstand something. 

 On the companies LinkedIn account, I have updated all incoming data about currently working employees and interns. The information both on our website and LinkedIn must be up to date, it comes pretty often that potential interns reach out to employees to get some information about the work. Us in the HR department has to make sure that interested candidates are provided with valid information related to work. Getting your information from students who decided to stop after approximately five to six days is not reliable. For Facebook to it is very important, since Facebook generated around 150 percent more traffic and attracts over 600 people more weekly. 

After a close discussion with my supervisor about my internship position, he pointed out that it is highly important for me to focus and get familiar with European labour law. All basic information available and necessary for me to know can be found on the website of the European Commission. 

Website: https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=157&langId=en

On the website itself, there is a lot to cover. I decided to focus on information that is most applicable to my situation, such as; youth employment, rights at work, and employment package. 

I have noted all the details about my last week’s work and today’s information adjusted on both LinkedIn and Facebook. I also requested a call on Monday so we could discuss some employees’ turnover, in comparison to their presence on the business server compared to agreed working hours. It all sounds very serious, however, it is actually just a way to calculate employee turnover and see how all of our progress during the pandemic. 

For PLO4 gather internal management information from an organization. I decided to focus on the knowledge I will gather about employees’ rights from the website of the European Commission, I will make evidence-based conclusions out of it and provide recommendation by asking my supervisor for feedback. I will also provide a course of action on how to follow the specific guidelines and follow the law. 

In the past two weeks, I set an alarm at seven in the morning to stand up and do some work-out before starting my laptop. I believe today was the first time that I successfully have got out of bed when the alarm went off, which is a huge progress compared to refusing to stand up, and leaving bed when the alarm starts to give you a headache.

At two o’clock I was scheduled to do my presentation for the Honours program conducted by ms. Leewee and ms. Gulickx-lee. Through which I was granted two starts, first for a professional drive and second for leadership. All of it had to do with the voluntary work I organized and participated in the last couple of months. I was very stressed and did not prepare anything at all since I know myself. If I prepare an entire speech I will lose track in the first 10 seconds. I am the kind of person who speaks directly from experience, rather than reading from prepared written pieces of paper. The picture below is taken by Trishula a friend of mine who attended my presentation on teams;

Bart had offered me some help with lead-generation very kid of him, even though I had everything figured out. It is good to know there are good people out there who will help you when you need it, also when you do not need it. Regarding all the questions due to the uncertainty, and for the next CMT meeting I have created a file. In this file students/individuals who are interested in the remote internship can directly have an insight into the specific tasks of each department. I wanted to wait with the idea until the next CMT meeting to let everyone know, however, I texted my supervisor and briefly told him about my idea. He was very curious about it so I have decided to make a file pointing out each internship which someone can sign up too. See below for the file;

I woke up a bit hungover this morning and forgot to set my alarm by the time I woke up my mom was already having breakfast, I have totally forgotten that I promised to go with my mom to the hospital because she had a hearing test scheduled. Because of me, we were a bit late which was funny because at the same time to doctor arrived saying she is late herself. Lucky me I guess. 

After we have gotten back home I opened up my laptop and emailed my supervisor, since he has full access to my only data generation file and asked him for feedback. I am always very surprised by how quickly he responds. He provided me with constructive feedback on where and how to make things easier for the next person who will be working with the file, which had more to do with alphabetical order and letter type. I can be pretty stubborn when it comes to feedback and my supervisor is a very optimistic person so I did not expect any criticism at all. It is a great lesson and opportunity for me to work on how I respond in a situation like that and actively listen to what others have to say. The more relieving part is that the feedback was not face-to-face, however, via the internet giving me a chance to reflect on the situation and how I else would respond. See the screenshot below for feedback.

Michelle Gatzka reached out to me today asking if I was willing to help create a video as a thank you to all the teachers at HU who are doing their best to provide us with education in these difficult times. I was more than willing to help as I am grateful to all teachers for all the hard work they put into this semester. I reached out to most of my friends and managed to convince 15 of them to participate and contribute to the final video, which can be found below;

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michelle-gatzka_dear-hu-university-of-applied-sciences-utrecht-activity-6656852427452497920-ZWF5

Piotr has also announced that he is waiting for the reaction of the CEO who is responsible for the single-family office event. Many events are being postponed/cancelled/delayed. However, he was still looking for some people who would like to help generate leads for some of the American states and I thought it would be interested for me to focus on foreign businesses for once instead of European. I assigned myself for the state of Nevada because it is the wealthiest and most populated from the states on the list, and figured out that there will be more to research on. 

Besides the monotone task of lead-generation, I have worked on creating a Vision Factory business strategy file. This file will be used by interns who have completed their internship and have to create a portfolio or write an essay about it. This file will provide them with the students/interns with key information about how the company works and what is it that the business focusses on and generates money with. This was not a task assigned by my supervisor, however, I offered to do this since everyone who completed their internship was annoyingly asking all of the questions in the company’s group chat, which in my opinion is very frustrating and unprofessional. This was one of my most creative solutions to something very annoying and Piotr was very grateful and enthusiastic about it. He has asked me to send the file first to him before sending it to the group chat. He did not expect me to be done the same day and I emailed the file to him that same day around 6 o’clock in the evening. 

See file below for Vison Factory business strategy file;

During the day itself, I have been active on LinkedIn. I have had an idea which I will propose during our next crisis management team meeting, which is: offering an internship from home. The details are still in progress, however, I believe that with a little teamwork, and some innovative ideas and solutions we will be able to provide some internships in departments more active during the quarantine. Many French students were the first to pack up and leave as soon as possible, which were supposed to work in the marketing department. Since marketing is a fast-growing and very essential and appealing department I am certainly convinced we can make it work. In one way or another. 

Today’s dinner was sponsored, held, and cooked by the Kremanolis family. I have been kindly invited to join the family for a delicious dinner, which I, of course, could not say no to. I was late for about an hour which was very frustrating since I was afraid the food was getting cold and everyone had to wait for me. I wanted to finish the file so badly and send it to my supervisor that I lost the sense of time. On top of me not having a sense of time and what day it is already.

 For PLO3 where I have to relate the working experience to theoretical knowledge and draw conclusions. Even though I have not worked in the marketing department, it is relatively easy to draw a clear conclusion between all the stuff you read in the book and all used in the working space. Since I work for the HR department I will deliver PLO3 I think in the form of a short story in which I underline all the tasks I had receive and expected. See draft below; 

Today was the second eastern day. It was nice to spend some time with my family, although my sister who claimed to be back on Sunday arrived today with her boyfriend. We had our argument about spending time together with days like Christmas and Eastern. I think I need to get used to her being in a relationship. Also have I told my mom that maybe this year we should not cook as much food as the year before, because at the end of the week we have to throw a lot away. Now guess what she did not listen.

Today is not an official working day, nonetheless have I decided to open up my work mail and see if I have any new emails in my inbox. Empty. I honestly did not feel like not doing anything for my internship, because the only thing we do at home during holidays is eating and getting fat. I spoke with Dominque who is making her own marketing strategy for the lead-generation. Although my supervisor did not ask me to create one by myself he mentioned before if someone is interested in joining the marketing strategy since a French marketing student quit the internship and decided to not continue from home.

I thought to myself that it is a good idea that I will promote my own lead generation myself, and gain some skills in marketing. I have been told that there is no need to work the entire plan on paper or word, but rather know how to approach a potential/interested customer about the segment and introduce the product in an appealing way e.g. online. Every Monday I am having a call with my supervisor about the end weeks report and I asked his opinion about my interference with the marketing team. He encouraged me to do so, however, said that if it does not work or I fail not to be ashamed about it and handing over the work to the rest. He was not expecting my phone call since its eastern, which I apologized for. My bad since I really lost the sense of time and what day it is because of the quarantine.

One of my colleagues sends me a file to help create a plan, which I rather had worked out so I knew where to start and how to proceed. See picture below for my idea;

In the evening I dropped some food at Costas house hopefully he and his partner like it.

Today it is ‘Good Friday’ meaning I will have to help my mom in the kitchen prepare way too many dishes for the entire weekend to come. It also means that most people are off from work. I have rather chosen to have a look at all that needs to be done for this week regarding my internship so I can prepare the end week report to my supervisor. I was a bit stressed since I know my mom can stay up till very late/early to finish all the food for the Easter, and knows how to manipulate me to help her with cooking all day and night until everything is finished. Since my sister left yesterday to hr boyfriend and will not be back until Sunday to help out. 

I believe to have gathered some valuable and reliable data for the single-family office event. I have had a brief look back at the financial courses I assigned myself to a couple of days ago to continue where I left things off. I have to confess it would be a much better idea to continue working on those days by day instead of taking a break of a few days and restarting again because it is hard to get on the same track. 

I have also made progress in communicating with my supervisor in my mother language. I have added Polish to my keyboard so now every time I am texting with my supervisor I switch it to prevent any errors and see where I made the mistakes. My supervisor insisted on communicating with me in Polish, which I actually really like because it is beneficial for me to maintain a professional level of the Polish language. Not to misunderstand together we have had a crisis management meeting via video chat, during which we all speak English since another employee is German (Sacha) and my supervisor’s business partner Spanish.

During today’s meeting we have discussed progress made by the current employees and interns and loss of productivity we did so through looking how does the delivered work differ from work that is delivered from the office, overall employee accessibility from 8:30 till 16:00 from Monday till Friday and hours spend on the companies server on average.

See the picture below for my WhatsApp conversation with my supervisor in Polish.

After the meeting on teams, I have come up with a great idea for PLO2 in which I demonstrate 5 instances where I communicate effectively and persuasively. I will do it a little differently than I first intended to, however, most of the PLOs will have to face some kind of creative solution to this unexpectedly changing environment. For example, for the use of appropriate body language as stated on my PLP I will use video chat as a tool to provide a clear description and documented evidence.

Besides working on the ‘’Family office data generation’’ I have also spend a few hours going through the administrative paperwork for the students who are planning to come to Barcelona for the internship. I told the students clearly that it is very important to get all the paperwork done, however, not to make any payments yet. As the situation is new to all of us, and yet we cannot fully assure them that the office will open at the end of the or next month.

After I have gotten my part assigned I started to collect the date asked from me for the single-family office event. I was very surprised when after a couple of hours or research I could only find approximate 5/6 companies across Poland, a country with almost 49 million inhabitants. So I did a little reading on the polish business newspapers and started to assume that since the single-family office industry as recently as begin of the 21st century entered the polish market only a few can be found. However, after sharing the online file with my supervisor and explaining to him that I struggle with collecting data for this specific industry, he emailed me back with some crucial tricks and ways to keep everything organized and how not to miss out on any information. Such as to look up specific industries headquarters by city name, instead of by country as a whole. The wise lesson for me today was to ask for the available help instead of stubbornly continuing. In the screenshot below an example of lead-generation can be found.

Also lately I am feeling a bit strange, I am very great full that my internship continues, that my family is safe and healthy, and that my friends are all okay. Yet every day I feel like something bad is about to happen and it really pushes me out of my comfort zone. It also affects my motivation for a thing like keeping up the daily reflective journal and working out.