1. INTRODUCTION

An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organisation for limited period of time.[1] At Cendekia Harapan, students that are joining the internship program, are required to work and be treated like any other employee. Other than the fact that they do not receive a wage or get paid in any sort of way. The range of classes from the interns are from 9th to 12th grade in each academic year at Cendekia Harapan. The duration of the internship is a total of five days, starting from 2 September, 2019 to 8 September, 2019.

 

The purpose of the internship program is to gain experience, have a simulation of the work life, and to advance skills and abilities to overcome situations. It is also giving interns the skill to be intuitive, which is helping customers and doing tasks that will satisfy them without having to be requested.

 

  1. COMPANY PROFILE

Odysseys Surf School is located at the Mercure Hotel in Kuta, right beside Kuta beach. It is a surf school that teaches intermediate and beginners. They also offer tours to surfing destinations in Bali. The place has instructors that take you out into the water to supervise and teach.

 

They also sell clothes and swim clothes in the surf school building, along with other stuff. Towels and rash vests can be rented, as well a boards. The employees are friendly and ready to help. There are also photographers that take photos of those doing the lessons out on the water. The photos can then be purchased in their store. Odyssey owns a bus that will pick you up to take you to their store and take you back to your hotel. The customers come from various countries, as not many people in those countries know how to surf, so they to try it out while they are visiting here.

 

For the lessons, there are different ones for each age group and the experience levels within those age groups. There are one on one lessons, one instructor with two people, and group lessons. They have a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram page. Reservations can be made at the store, on their website, or phone call.

 

  • INTERNSHIP ACTIVITIES

In the entire five days, we participated in an internship at Odysseys Surf School located in Kuta. We have two shifts, the first one starts in morning and the second shift in the afternoon. From 9 am to 1 pm and from 1 pm to 5pm. In the first shift, the interns are Manaca and Jaiden while in the second shift is Nadia and Michael.

 

On Monday to Wednesday we did three jobs, first take the rash vests and towels from the guest and count the amount. Our other job is to exchange towel tickets for towels that guests will give to us, same with the rash vests. The second job is to clean the store. We cleaned the room with a broom and mop. The third job is to choose photos. We had to choose good photos on the laptop to be posted on Odysseys Surf School official Instagram. After selecting the photo, we edit the photo using a cellphone so that the photo quality is improved. Michael and Nadia also made videos which will also be posted on the Instagram account.

 

On Thursday to Friday we made paper bags to be filled with cookies for guests. We had to cut paper in one size, and we make paper bags with glue and fold like origami. The amount of paper bags that we made is around 250 to 350 items. On Friday Michael joined the surfing lesson from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm. We had a lot of fun and learnt many new things.

 

  1. SWOT ANALYSIS AND PROPOSED BUSINESS STRATEGY

Table 1. SWOT Analysis

Strengths Weaknesses
–        The company is well known and has customers from various different countries.

–        Located in Kuta Beach which is a good location due to high numbers of tourists in the area with easy and fast access to beach.

–        Uses social media to promote.

–        Full team of experienced and licensed staff ranging from surf instructors to photographers.

–        The company has additional services such as picking up guests from hotels, taking professional photos and available water at all times.

 –        With customers from many countries, not all are able to speak English or Indonesian. Employees have hard time communicating with customers using other languages.

 
Opportunities Threats
–        The company has quite a big audience on their various social medias. The company can attract a larger audience. –        Odysseys Surf School has a lot of nearby competition with cheaper prices.

 

To eliminate or reduce the weaknesses and threats of the company, we have proposed some business strategies.  The company should use globally familiar icons in order to communicate with guests easier. For example, instead of writing the word “toilet” on a sign, a simple icon of a stick-figured female and male automatically identifies as a restroom. This could be used to locate changing rooms and showers but also to direct guests in the process of exchanging coupons for rashvests and locker keys. Next, to outdo their competitors, the company should promote the quality of the surf school and additional services which they have available. Occasional discounts, promos and sales could attract more customers as well.

 

  1. CONCLUSION

During the five days of this internship, we were able to say that we have gained communication skills when talking to guests despite the language barrier. We have also acquired business skills in promoting. We were taught how impactful smallest difference in pictures we chose to post on the internet might affect the audience/ customers. The importance of team work was also learnt during the internship when crowds of customers enter the store at once and we had to help each other manage several things at once. We believe that the internship is a program which is very beneficial to students. This is because interns will always learn something, whether if it is just to fold paper bags. This experience will be useful for the future.

 

  1. REFERENCES

Cambridge English Dictionary, “internship”, accessed on September 12, 2019,   https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/internship.

[1] “internship”, Cambridge English Dictionary, accessed on September 12, 2019,   https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/internship.