Turning New Experiences into feelings of Accomplishments at HARA
Written by: Mustafa Turner
4th Year Industrial Engineering Major
The University of Indonesia
If you’ve ever been a university student, you probably have heard of “internship horror stories”. These spooky tales passed down from seniors or friends, usually goes like this: A student applies for an internship, they get accepted, but they aren’t given any meaningful tasks, thus not gaining any good working experience for the duration of the internship. Scary, isn’t it?
As a university student myself, these stories came into consideration when I was thinking of places for an internship. I ended up applying at HARA, an Indonesian Agri-Tech startup, and during the interviewing process this topic came up. The interviewer asked me what expectations I had for working at HARA. I replied that I wanted to get involved and make an impact on a project. I soon found out that HARA was working on something which was planned to be launched in Bojonegoro, East Java, so I got the chance to travel and work there.
Although I was constantly working with unfamiliar topics, I’ve never felt overwhelmed.
Before I went to Bojonegoro, I hadn’t been briefed about the details of the project. When I got there, I found out that it was because the project had just begun. I was given a quick briefing on HARA Depo, a planned one-stop-shop where farmers can buy input products, rent equipment, and even sell their crops. After that, I was assigned a task to map out the business process for HARA Depo. I was thrown into the middle of it all. Gradually, the fear of not contributing to the project vanished from my mind.
After I handed in my task, I was given another one, then another one, and it quickly became a pattern. Sometimes the tasks were similar, and other times they weren’t. Although they were different, each task was always connected in one way or another. The way that we were working helped me make a mental model that we were building this giant puzzle, piece by piece from different angles. It made me feel like I had contributed to the final product that is HARA Depo.
Most of the time, the tasks that were given to me were about something that I’ve known about, but I’ve never done in a working environment. This pushed me to learn, from notating business process models, to making financial models, and even making geographical information systems (GIS). Although I was constantly working with unfamiliar topics, I’ve never felt overwhelmed. I felt that if I needed something, I could ask someone, and they would help. This removed some of the stress that I would’ve gotten otherwise.
The way that we were working helped me make a mental model that we were building this giant puzzle, piece by piece from different angles.
The biggest assignment that I was given was to develop a temporary solution for recording transactions, inventory, and customers in HARA Depo. For a few different reasons, third party Point of Sales systems wasn’t compatible with our use case, so we needed to develop our own, but this caused some problems. Developing a POS from scratch takes time, and we needed something quick, so we decided to use Microsoft Powerapps, a platform that allows you to quickly develop business apps. I was given the responsibility to make the said app, but the problem was that I’ve never developed an application before, let alone use Microsoft Powerapps.
Despite the roadblock of never using it before, I wasn’t about to let anyone down, so I set out and tried to make the app. I learned and made it as best as I could, and every time someone from the team checked on my progress, they gave me positive feedback and constructive criticism. It made me even more excited to continue working on it. After a few weeks, the app was finally deployed, and despite some problems, it left me feeling relieved.
Every time someone from the team checked on my progress, they gave me positive feedback and constructive criticism. It made me even more excited to continue working on it.
Later I found three main takeaways that contribute to my sense of accomplishment, which were: realizing how my task fits in and completes the big picture, working on tasks that were interesting to me, and having a team that helps each other and cooperates well. These three things eliminated any trace of my previous premonitions. If you’re also a university student, I encourage you to intern in a place that has these three qualities, because a place like that can make learning and experiencing new things into a sense of achievement.
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