Christina Au: The Intersection of Business Education and Government Work
Working as a part of the City of San José’s Office of Economic Development team for the past few months has been a very fulfilling experience. Oftentimes, I feel like the distinction between working for the City and attending my classes is very clear, and I treat them as two separate parts of my life. However, the overlap between my two experiences is the business skills I learned from my business education that I now apply to my internship. While my overall knowledge of certain business topics and concepts is helpful because it contributes to my confidence in my background knowledge of the business world, the soft skills I gained are what really support me in my endeavors with the City of San José.
In Global & Cultural Environment of Business (MGMT 80S), I not only learned about conducting SWOT analyses and consulting for firms, but also gained more experience collaborating and deliberating with different teams. Business Law (BUSN 85) not only taught me about the specific business laws, cases, and practices that affect our lives, society, and business transactions, but also instilled in me the importance of attention to detail, persistence, and time management. Being exposed to different aspects of business other than just my major- marketing- through my core business classes has enabled me to respect those and the work they do in different business departments even more.
As the Marketing and Communications intern at the City of San José’s Office of Economic Development, communication, collaboration, and openness are all skills that I exercise and improve upon everyday on the job. Routine tasks as well as larger projects cannot be completed without working interdepartmentally, whether that is with the Small Business Development team or the City’s general Marketing and Communications team. Government work consists of many moving parts, as well as multiple projects and goals that are all being worked on at the same time. As an intern juggling various projects with different due dates, a skill that I was able to develop a lot more these past few months was accountability. Because my supervisor is constantly busy managing and completing multiple projects, it is my responsibility to stay on top of my own work and to initiate checking in with him about projects and asking for feedback. As I am now more settled into my role and am gaining more responsibilities, I look forward to the challenge of learning how to balance working on projects with attending more meetings and community engagement events.