Work Placement

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Table of Contents

Company Background        2

Daily Tasks        2

Reflection        4

Company Background

I was lucky enough to find myself an international placement for half a semester. I have always wanted to experience China and work internationally once I have graduated, therefore this was the perfect opportunity for me. I was able to secure a placement in an international HR intern role with a company called CSOFT International. CSOFT stands for Communication Solutions of Foreign Trade and their main business was to provide translation and localisation solutions to big companies around the globe in all kinds of trade.  Some of the trades are social sciences, customer retail and product, aviation and transportation.  Some of the clients included Huawei, Alibaba, GE and DJI Drones. The bulk of the companies that worked with CSOFT were technology companies for app development. Localization is a very important factor for app development due to the revenue that non-speaking English countries create from downloading apps. By localizing the apps to different languages will boost this even further.

CSOFT International was founded in Beijing and now has office around the globe. The medium sized company has around 250-300 in house employees but in addtion, the company developed an app called Stepps for instant translation jobs which now has over 100,000 freelance workers on there too. The CEO, Shaunee Yee was awarded a Stevie Award for Best Asian Entrepreneur for Women in Business and also was identified by CNN Money as one of technology’s 36 most powerful disrupters. The translation and localisation industry is turning very competitive, especially in China. CSOFT’s competitors include Lionbridge, Welocolize, SDL and Transperfect.

Many of the projects within the company revolved around translation from Chinese to other languages but there were many more projects. From app development, website building and voice overs. Some examples of projects that were open when I was there were the following:

• United Nations Sudan Mission
• Localize a new Huawei phone from Chinese to English
• Translation of a Chinese computer game to French, German, Spanish, English, Japanese and Korean
• Software development for HP computers
• Creative writing and marketing for Aliexpress
• Development of Alicloud

Daily Tasks
The workforce itself was very dynamic due to the company’s international clients. There are many nationalities working at the company which made the workplace a very interesting and cultural place to be. Due to the large mix of cultures, I was able to help with organising cross-cultural events. These events are put into place to promote cross department communication. As well as expats working in the company, we also had many local employees. It was very hard to get the local employees to interact with the international employees due to language barriers, confidence and difference in work ethics. It is widely known that many of the Asian population are quite shy when speaking to new people, therefore It was HR’s responsibility to try to break this barrier and try to get them involved. For the national holiday ‘Mid-Autumn festival’, I worked alongside our receptionist to put on a small party to celebrate the holiday and hopefully get all of the employees together. We bought moon cakes, the traditional cake ate during this time and also had a dumpling making class. The event was successful and it definitely improved relationships between the international and local staff. In future events the locals attended and spoke to other people from different departments which showed that they had become more comfortable and confident.

Prior to starting my placement, I was concerned about the volume of work I would be given and what tasks an intern would be responsible for. But I was pleasantly surprised at the level of responsibility given to me in my first few weeks and also for the rest of the duration of my placement.  During my first week I was introduced to the company, the functions of the international HR team and what the current projects that are being worked on within the company. This gave me a good understanding of what was expected of me and also the culture of the company. In the IHR team there was only a team of 3 employees. The director, an associate and myself. I believe that the level of responsibility reflected on the team size which was very beneficial. 

During my time at CSOFT International, I was able to touch upon the majority of functions that a HR practitioner would in their job role. One of the major roles for me was recruitment. Since the company had freelance and in-house demand from clients, there was constant active recruitment. I learned a lot about the different methods of recruitment and also which platform to use to attract certain talent. I also became aware of the functions and importance of LinkedIn recruiter and how effective it is for recruiters and businesses. I originally screened cv’s for my mentor as she organised interviews and conducted them, but over time I was given the responsibility of completing the full recruitment process of all of our interns that would join different teams around China. This was sourcing, sitting in interviews and eventually conducting them myself, on-boarding training and even visa applications. The turnover of employees in China is very high due to many factors such as visa problems, family and culture shock. Staff retention was a high priority for HR as it was very costly to hire oversees talent. From these tasks to try to retain our employees I also learned about negotiation and how to conduct this to help boost staff morale.  

I was also given many side projects in addition to recruitment which I was thankful for. One project which I thought was really interesting was working with the United Nations, one of our clients, on a trip to Sudan. They required two of our employees who were contracted for the project to visit. With Sudan being a high-risk country due to its political and government problems, there could be many legal implications towards the company if anything was to happen to either of the two workers. Therefore, I was asked by the CEO of CSOFT to create a liability waiver for the two employees to sign. From this project I learned a lot about employment law in both China and Sudan and also developed my research skills further. 

After graduation I am interested in specialising in learning and development. Even though there wasn’t much training happening on site whilst I was there, I was given the responsibility of creating numerous documents for new employees who are on-boarding. This information would tell them about the company rules, their contracts and more. Depending on the city the new hire was located or relocating to, I also produced a welcoming pack on that city which highlighted many aspects. This included average rent cost, hospitals and doctors, emergency numbers, population and more. Quarterly training occurred which I organised with my mentor. We had to organise all of the training for the China offices (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing) which was very difficult as most of the upper management have relocated to the new head office in Boston. Therefore, the time zone was 13 hours behind making it hard to arrange a suitable time for everyone to sit in.