Kendra GADONG
Consumer Analytics Intern
(January 2021 – July 2021)
Figure 1. Lenovo Office Access Card
Figure 2. Work Station
Seven months of juggling internship responsibilities in the morning and graduate classes at night was no easy task. It was even more challenging working from home when most of the time all you face is a chunk of code which you had no idea where to start debugging, and no one around to ask right away.
I still vividly remember the internship phone interview I had when I was applying to the Consumer Analytics internship role at Lenovo. The night before my interview I practiced answering typical interview questions hiring managers would ask about -- previous work, leadership experiences, strengths and weaknesses, and the reason why you applied to their company. While I was nervous since it was my first interview here in Singapore, I felt prepared and confident when I saw that most of the job requirements matched my skills in statistical programming, forecasting, and dashboard making. It was funny how I thought of how prepared I was when the first question they asked me was, “What are the assumptions of regression?” I didn’t even think of reviewing any technical concepts. I guess I was just lucky -- that was also the week that our Applied Statistical Analysis with R class had regression lessons, which made me able to answer quickly. After the interview was finished, I reflected on how the questions were 80% on the technical side, and only 20% was culture fit or personal questions. To my surprise, two hours after the interview, I received an email that I passed the interview, and was offered the consumer analytics intern position 3 months before internship started. Off to a good start, I emailed my supervisor after two days and accepted the offer and was excited to start my role as a Consumer Analytics Intern.
When my internship started in January of this year, we came to the office to pick up our laptops (Lenovo, of course) and access cards. There were two other SMU interns on my team, but they were under different supervisors as me. I learned that Lenovo and SMU have had this internship partnership that takes in a batch of 3-4 interns twice a year for four years already. It gave us that sense of responsibility that we also bear the name of the school in the quality of our work.
Although we were excited to keep reporting to office, work-from-home was still the default arrangement during that time. My supervisor onboarded us on how we will be evaluated as interns, and the project that each of us will be handling. During lunch, we took an office shuttle that takes us to the nearest mall from the office. And the whole day, we spent it going through orientation slides, and past projects and codes from previous interns.
My responsibility as a consumer analytics intern was to support projects in data collection, cleaning, feature engineering, machine learning, time series forecasting model building and evaluation, and regular model recalibration. The main project I handled was a consumer segment forecasting model that uses time series data to forecast consumer product sales of the different segments. As a data analyst, I did a lot of data cleaning, data visualization through trend charts, data analysis, and process automation. I was also once tasked to do a time series data imputation to handle missing values in the dataset. This enabled us to draw some insights without losing the detailed information. Halfway through my internship, I made a presentation which highlighted all the tasks I did and how those created value for the team. That presentation was for also for the analytics team and our director to evaluate my progress. I shared how aside from my day-to-day report generation and analysis, I have spearheaded code automation in R and Excel and how that reduced a lot of run time and improved process efficiency. That midterm evaluation was also pivotal for me when they offered me to continue as a part-time data analyst even after my internship to become the technical lead and give support to the next batch of interns.
Figure 3. Photo with Fellow MITB Interns
Overall, I have learned three things during my 7-month internship. Firstly, I have learned the importance of self-learning. A remote internship was at first difficult, but that gave me a sense of responsibility to self-learn and improve on my technical skills in R by researching, understanding the code, debugging, and deploying the code. Secondly, I was always curious and asked questions especially when something was not clear, which made me realize the importance of collaboration. From the collaboration from my co-interns, and my mentors and colleagues, I learned a lot about Lenovo and the manufacturing industry, and how that improved my analytical skills and industry knowledge. Lastly, handling a project that is used to provide data-driven insights on portfolio optimization for Lenovo worldwide, I have learned the importance of ownership. Even when you make mistakes, being a proactive owner means that we learn every step of the way, having that sense of responsibility and pride that the model you have enhanced has driven revenue and market share growth. Self-learn, collaborate, and be a proactive owner.
The past seven months have really shaped me and given me that opportunity to practice my data analytical skills which I have learned from the MITB program. I am grateful that SMU MITB has the internship incorporated in the program to give international students like me the chance to study and work at the same time here in Singapore. Aside from that, the professional guidance and support that the Postgraduate Career Services has provided, especially from my internship and career advisors, Yanru and Dawn, has helped me manage the challenges I was facing, and assisted me in my career decision making.
While Lenovo aims to achieve “Smarter Technology for All” through continuous innovation of products like laptops and smartphones, I will always aim to learn beyond the four walls of the classroom, or in our case the four corners of a computer screen. Always looking forward to learning more not just in the MITB program but to wherever the next chapter for me may be.
Figure 4. Photo of Myself
