BU student, Owen Liang

Name: Owen Liang
Boston University College of Arts & Sciences, Class of 2023
Internship: Vista

  1. Tell us about your internship experience. What were your responsibilities? This summer I interned at the print marketing team in Vista, an e-commerce company that specializes in DIY merchandise production for small business owners. My responsibilities including setting up data dashboards for the team to evaluate previous campaign performance, coordinating with multiple stakeholders on the production of current print assets, and assisting in the operations of the team.
  2. What resources at BU or elsewhere did you use to get your internship? I used Handshake to land myself the opportunity. But beforehand I did use BU’s CCD’s mock interview sessions to help me get comfortable in interviews. The staff there had provided me with valuable feedback.
  3. What were your favorite parts of your internship? What are some lessons learned?The favorite part of my internship is that my team treated me like I’m a full time employee, so that has encouraged me to put in a lot of the effort to ensure my team has enough information to make business decisions. In addition, the company is kind enough to host resume workshops and coffee chats for interns to interact with the executive team and the HR team. Some of the lessons that I learned included how to handle disagreements with multiple stakeholders, and how to communicate effectively with the team (e.g., sending recap emails, creating systems where information could be stored, etc.)
  4. What are three things your internship experience has thought you about working in the U.S. and your plans after graduation? Coming from China, I experienced cultural shock when I started working for the team, but I found myself to embrace the U.S. working style because of the following reasons:
    1. Efficient > longer working hours: I love how my internship stresses the importance of working efficiently rather than working for longer hours, and I do find myself to enjoy work a lot more as a result because I am able to accomplish more tasks and seeing it making immediate impact to the team.
    2. Supportive > bureaucracy: During my internship, everyone was very supportive and was willing to take the time to teach me; they wanted to see me to be successful in the internship as well. The team also valued input from interns even though I had less experience, which to me is a factor that kept me motivated throughout the entire internship.
    3. More conscious about my professional development: During my internship I tried to network with as many people in the company as possible, and they provided valuable feedback to me on how I should plan my career path. With that said, I plan on finding opportunities that would allow me to bridge the best of both East and West cultures, and to foster more business collaboration to create positive value to society.