On May 7, 2025, SFS successfully hosted its 29th career planning lecture. This lecture focused on internships in internet companies, with the speaker sharing her employment insights and giving fellow students advice on career planning.

Zhao Yilin (a MA student in Foreign Languages and Literature, class of 2023) shared her internship experience in a POD-based cross-border e-commerce company—ALLWE. She shared from five aspects: the company's introduction, job responsibilities, challenges and solutions, internship acquirements, and suggestions to fellow students.

She began by introducing the e-commerce operations, company positioning, and reasons for choosing internships in cross-border e-commerce company. She particularly highlighted that the company where she now works as an intern is a startup with an open culture that encourages free ideas and a flat structure enabling staff to master the entire cross-border operation process.

She also shared her job responsibilities, including product selection support, listing optimization, data monitoring, cross-departmental coordination, and solving issues like sizing or inventory problems.

She stated this internship helped her improve in two dimensions. For the hard skills, she grasped Amazon backend operations, bulk ad management, competitor price tracking, and data analysis (descriptive, diagnostic, predictive).

Her soft skills, such as cross-team collaboration, high-pressure multitasking, crisis management, and habits of continuous improvement, also improved significantly.

At last, she provided practical advice based on her own experience. First, tailor resumes to job descriptions using "skill + example + data", leveraging projects or campus experience. Besides, research the company's business model, products, market orientation before an interview. During the interview, aligning your skills with the company's needs using the STAR method will help impress the interviewer.

During the internship, one needs to embrace foundational tasks to gain experience, seek project involvement, communicate growth goals with supervisors, address team challenges, and maintain structured work logs.

Zhao emphasized in her closing remarks the balance between company strategy and specific execution. She suggests that students choose jobs aligned with their interests.

This lecture enhanced students’ understanding of industry demands and provided guidance for improving their competitiveness in future careers.