From this program, I was able to know the importance of Biotechnology and its role in sustainable future and also practise my thinking skills. The innovation project make me think of lots of consequences or effect that will bring to our mother Earth as the project not only focusing on the technology but eco-friendly and sustainability future. Other than that, the Q&A sessions on talk and forum also make me think out of the box.
Through this program, I was also able to practise communication skills, leadership and team working skills. All sponsorship executive are assigned to a WhatsApp group where we speak on the problems we faced, opinions and also having some discussion. Also we have a google drive where our task are assigned and written down there. This indirectly practise my leadership and team working skills. As a sponsorship executive, I have to call up to 100 companies a month to ask for sponsorship. My communication skills was directly enhanced as I have to prepare to speak in Malay, English, Chinese sometimes even Hokkien and Cantonese. At first, I have to make a cold call briefly explain the concept of our program and get their person-in-charge contact and email information to follow up with them in future. After that, I have to email our program paperwork, proposal, sponsorship prospectus to the companies. Next, if there is no respond from the companies, I will have to call them again for confirmation.
I have working experience as sales/promoter and this might be my self strength/advantage towards this activities. However, the experiences are still not exactly the same for both situations. For my working experience, I was approaching to customer face to face where I am able to look the customer in the eye and show them attracting flyer or product. In this requesting for sponsorship, I can only use words or sentence to approach to companies (not an individual) and this is the challenge I have to overcome. I have to speak more professionally and formal and I need to try my best to give the companies overview of our program in a short time. Other than that, there is also another challenge i faced which is time management. This is because mostly companies working hours are on weekdays and I have classes on weekdays as well. Thus, the available time for me to make calls is very limited and I have to seize every free time slot opportunity.
