Fountfully Work Experience For Internship

In the past 8 weeks, I have had the opportunity to do an internship at a social enterprise, Fountfully, where I had the chance to put the knowledge and skills I have accumulated in school to use. Although short, it was an enriching experience where I got to learn and work with colleagues from various backgrounds. Working in a small start-up that is simultaneously a social enterprise has also enabled me to experience things my friends do not in their internship.

My job role was a Digital Marketing Intern, hence at the start of the internship, I had thought I would be doing the same things I did in my Marketing modules, and maybe occasionally dabble in a little bit of administrative work if needed. Oh, how I was proven wrong. On the very first day, I was notified that even though on paper my role was a Digital Marketing Intern, I was to fulfil whatever role the company needed at that point. From then on, during the 8 weeks, I was a video editor, a translator, and even a web designer

In all honesty, I had entered this internship thinking it would be a mundane 9 to 6 job, where I just come to the office, sit there waiting for work to be assigned to me and do said work till 6 pm when I can just pack up and go home. In actuality, this internship was nothing close to it at all. On just the second day of my internship, I was told to go out for filming with my colleagues for the new company merchandise that had arrived that day. From then, I learnt that every week was going to be something different from the last and not to expect a mundane working life like my other friends had. There were times I spent my mornings at home, uploading videos and working on other projects and afternoons in the office where I could discuss work matters with my colleagues. There were also times when I spent the entire day working at home accomplishing the tasks given to me at my own pace with the trust that I would accomplish said tasks promptly and properly.

When I first knew that I would be interning at Fountfully and that it was a social enterprise, I did not understand what a social enterprise was. I was told that Fountfully donates up to 40% of their profits to charities and their partnered beneficiaries, and honestly, I thought that would be the extent of what they did. I was proven wrong when I was notified that we would be going for a volunteering session every other Thursday during company working hours. This was something I have not heard of personally, for a company to regularly take time out to do volunteering. This was when my perception of a social enterprise changed.

My experience working at Fountfully was quite a unique one if I may say so myself. Having tried out a wide range of roles from editing YouTube videos and TikTok snippets to designing a website, I can say for certain that I have come out of this internship equipped with more skills than before.

For the first couple of weeks, I was tasked with mainly the filming and editing of the TikTok snippets of the actual video. I took to this role quite easily mainly because I had very friendly intern colleagues that were willing to take time and guide me whenever I had questions. One of the main issues I faced was with filming since I was clueless about what angles were good, what shots were interesting enough and more. With practice though, I found the filming process to be increasingly easier till the point where I was able to film an entire YouTube video by myself!

I edited the Hay Dairies TikTok the second day I was at work, edited and filmed the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Bukit Timah Railway Station (BTRS) and National Design Centre (NDC) TikToks for the next few weeks when my colleagues were still around. I also had the opportunity to design YouTube thumbnails for the SAM, NDC, and Dignity Kitchen videos. These were done when I still had the option of asking other interns for their help but when their internship period was finished, I was left to do my tasks alone.

One memorable thing I did was translating and subtitling for the Dignity Kitchen video as I had to transcribe and translate the entire video from scratch especially since I had to translate it to Traditional Chinese, something I am not that familiar with.

Once I was past the halfway mark of my internship, I began on a new journey of setting up an e-commerce shop on the company’s website and creating marketing materials for the products.

Here comes one of my proudest works, the e-commerce shop on the website. The shop on the Fountfully website did not exist until I was tasked to create it from scratch. I designed the layout of the page, put in the product description, pictures, Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) numbers, stock numbers and more. I had to also ensure that the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of the page was fine so that the page would show up when people search for it. I did have the guidance of my boss and an example of an already set-up e-commerce store for me to refer to, but other than that, I had to rely on myself to set up the shop.

I also had to learn some basic HTML coding to improve user experience on the website, the code would show up when the customer finishes checking out their products and will thank them for their purchase and supporting the company. I also learnt about Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters and utilised them when adding links on the website and other social media platforms.

In the last week of my internship, I was tasked to do a video on the Cloud Forest at Gardens by The Bay. Something I had learnt from my prior experiences of filming for previous videos was how I had panned too fast and sometimes too much. I figured that I could slow down when panning the videos to reduce the dizziness the viewers might experience when watching the videos. Additionally, I could also take some still shots of scenery that could add variety to the types of shots in the video.

After editing and putting together four snippets, I felt quite confident in my ability to create something that I could be proud of putting out, and that indeed was the case for this snippet. On the other hand, I was still quite unsure about putting together a whole video that would require more effort and skills than the snippet video. As I started importing the videos into the software, I started to already plan what videos would go in which order, what type of music I would use and what information I wanted to put in the video. As I started editing, I found out that this was very helpful, that I already had a creative direction I wanted to work towards, and this helped to increase my confidence in making a quality video

After putting out the first draft and getting some feedback on places I could improve, I put the tools I had learnt to use — such as the fading of the audio and video — and the video was finally completed!

The three main things I learnt from this internship are the importance of communication, adaptability and proactiveness in the workplace.

Keeping each other updated on what we were doing and how much progress was being made on the tasks was essential to avoid any overlaps or miscommunication. Without communicating clearly with one another, I may have thought that another colleague was responsible for editing something when she was not. This would have set us back by a day since that part would not have been completed and could not be uploaded in time.

I had to adapt to the workplace fast, especially since when a few weeks in, I would be the only intern working there. Adapting to the workplace was not too hard as my co-workers were very friendly and willing to help me with any queries I had, which helped me, especially in the first week when I was still new to everything. In hindsight, if I had not adapted fast and not gotten used to the hang of the job, I would have struggled more when it was time for me to do work completely independently.

Proactiveness is also very important, especially as an intern keen on exploring the working world. I had to ask for tasks frequently especially when I was new to the company since the other employees had already built up a steady rhythm where everyone knew what to do. Thankfully though, after the first week, I also started knowing what my role in the company was and would contribute without any prompting or needing to ask anyone.

One thing I can work on is communication especially after the other interns left and I was left to my own devices. I had often made the mistake of assuming that my boss would be aware when I had completed my task. However, this was not the case as there were a few instances where he had asked me if I had finished my work. After having the company evaluation talk in the second last week of my internship, I was told about this area of improvement and hence have tried to improve on that in my last week. I updated my boss about when I finished filming and when I uploaded the snippets and drafts for the videos.

Another area I can improve on is my resourcefulness. One instance was when I needed to set up an e-commerce store on Lazada and the company’s website and needed to fill in the stock number for each product. Instead of thinking of another way I could get the stock numbers, I depended on my supervisor for the stock numbers. It was only when he told me I could use the Shopee store listings as a reference for the stock numbers that I realised that that indeed was an effective way of getting the information that I needed.

In a nutshell, this internship has been a short but fruitful one, having explored a wide range of job roles that certainly will aid me in the future whether be it searching for jobs in the same area or furthering my education. This internship has also been drastically different from what I expected it to be and would be an interesting experience I can share with my friends.