New Visions: Jamie's journey in Tesla

Jamie Huang, who is currently 3rd year GHRM MBA student, gladly shares internship experience at Tesla Company, which took place from April 18th to August 31st 2018.

Jamie was highly impressed by Tesla company profile and Elon Musk – charismatic and innovative CEO of the company, so when the recruiting post on the website popped up there was zero hesitation about applying for internship. Just in case anyone is not familiar with Tesla, it’s an American company, which mainly sells electric vehicles and energy products. 

Jamie was a Recruiting Intern at Tesla, Inc. (formerly Tesla Motors, Inc.), so the prior responsibility was to recruit Tesla 2018 summer interns and some entry-level positions for other departments. Most of the time at the company, Jamie was doing resume screening, phone interviewing, and assisting in face-to-face interviews, also a lot of administrative work, which was inevitable in the job, such as creating job vacancy, collecting candidate profile, and filing new hire information on the system.

The difficulty during the internship was when Jamie thought there were not enough candidates applying the internship positions, thus Jamie had to try different methods to search potential candidates and find many other ways to attract more people to apply, and surprisingly hundreds of people applied the internship just right before the application deadline, which might be the human nature. 

The job itself was very interesting and practical, and Jamie had a chance to get in touch with all kinds of candidates everyday and learned how to operate the online HR system, which all brought very valuable hands-on experiences. Besides, the work environment was very encouraging and flexible: the colleagues there were easy-going and willing to share their own experiences. Working in such a fast-paced environment helped Jamie to enhance adaptability and resilience that trained to work in a more systematical way.

Jamie explains that the basic three factors from NSYSU GHRM MBA Program helped a lot: the English environment; cross-cultural projects and HR knowledge, obtained during courses. “When you personally encounter the situation, then you will realize the concepts that you learned before.” – says Jamie. Since Tesla is a foreign company, there were a few foreigners in the office and they often communicated in English especially when writing emails. Also, Jamie had to cooperate closely with the HR department in Hong Kong.

Jamie 100% recommends other students to enroll in the internship that fits their interests or would like to have a try, especially the kinds of internship that can help know more about the realistic aspects of the job itself.

For those, who is planning to apply for a job in a specific company, Jamie suggests to do some research on the company that you want to apply for. “It’s always a plus to show the interviewer your passion when you already possess basic knowledge before the interview, and then you can have more resonance and interaction with the interviewer. Do some simple preparation such as their products/service, their latest achievements, or their current situation in the region that you are applying for.”