INTERNSHIP PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Internship Professional Practice

Learning Log

Problem

The retail company with which I was working in depicted the problems to be persisting in the leadership and in the problem solving area. Continuous advances in the technology highlights the need for the absolute leadership so that the retail business could be developed in alignment with the dynamics of the retail industry. This weakness in the model pertaining to the leadership triggered the lack of problem-solving skills among the employees and top management as well. These triggers challenges in meeting the needs of clients appropriately.

Brief Summary of Experiences

I am on the verge of completing my MBA and as part of my Post Graduate internship; I worked in the retail industry. I worked at one of the United Kingdom's growing retail company for gift items as Retail Assistant Manager. Working at the management level of the company provided me with immense managerial related exposure that is extremely important for the internship program at the Master's level. I learned greatly about the leadership and problem-solving skills related to the managerial level working in this capacity thereby improving my skills in addition to contributing to my professional development.

This one year internship which has just ended contributed to my skill set the ability to monitor and achieve sales as depicted by the sales budget with alignment to the cost budget. I was responsible to apply commercial skills so as to meet the cost and the sales budget. Being working in the capacity of Retail Assistant Manager, I was responsible to assist the Retail Manager in various key functions which further provided me with great opportunity to learn and develop myself accordingly. I was responsible to assist the Retail Manager in the hiring, development and retaining of the employees. In the development and the retention process, I was further expected to make sure that the team is delivering good customer service, which will further help in their development and retention.

This is followed by the provision of administrative support to the sales representative so as to ensure the development of the salesmen and their sales staff. Furthermore, I was responsible to meet operational expectations by the implementation and maintenance of high retail standards in addition to motivating the staff. I also looked into customers' enquiries and complaints and dealt with them so as to effectively serve customers and meet customers' demands. In addition to that, I was responsible for effective store merchandising and to help organize promotions. I also looked into managing the deliveries and materials received from suppliers.

This helped me in the development of my leadership skills which is enhanced through working side by side with the Retail Manager and problem solving skills. Despite the presence of loopholes in their systems and models for these skills in place, I was able to learn about the problems in them in addition to my learning and development. Working to meet the sales and cost budget helped sharpen my leadership and problem solving skills since I had to design and ...