Junior Achievement’s Job Shadowing By James Fan on behalf of the SAS Business Club
On November 14, 12 high school students from the Business Club were privileged to “job shadow” at FedEx and Batey Consulting. This job shadowing was set up by Business Teacher Tico Oms in coordination with Junior Achievement, which recently opened an office in Singapore. Along with seven other students, we met at FedEx Express Changi South early Friday morning wearing business attire. Before splitting up with our assigned instructors, we observed the assembly line system used by the FedEx couriers to ensure that packages are delivered before 10:30am. The couriers scan each package so that the status of the delivery can be tracked; in fact, there is a 99.6% scanning efficiency rate. Later, Corey Robinson and I departed the Changi station with our instructors and headed toward the Financial Service Center. Corey was guided by Prashant Menon, manager of Technological Services, and had the opportunity to sit in on a conference call concerning a server crash with the Sydney branch of FedEx. I met the entire finance department, which deals with the invoice adjustments, credit collections and cash applications of nine countries: Singapore, Australia,
New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia. Sherry Jamkam, who worked in the Thailand group, gave me a tour around the office and introduced me to Senior Manager Corrine Abras. During my time at the FSC, I also experienced a diverse working environment and the stimulating rush of an interview. Also, I had the chance to answer the questions of a customer calling from Taiwan, which put me on the opposite end of the service line for the first time. Back at the Changi plant, Shankar, the operations manager, guided Alex Hoffer. Shankar was in charge of logging the working hours of the couriers to the minute. Alex had firsthand experience managing the couriers and took part in Shankar’s project to reorganize the delivery routes of each courier as an alternative solution to firing a portion of the team. At noon, the students and instructors had a revitalizing lunch and called it a day. At Batey Consulting, Kevin Kim “shadowed” the senior operations manager as he discussed an advertising event for the new Audi A3 and A4. Through this event coordination, Kevin gained an understanding of the challenges posed
by group collaboration in a working environment and the importance of effective communication in evincing ideas. Overall, there was an overwhelming return of positive feedback by both the students and instructors. This event marks the first of many job shadowing opportunities for the SAS community in the future where students can be exposed to real working environments. On behalf of the students who attended the Job Shadowing program, our thanks and gratitude to all the employees of FedEx and Batey Consulting who took time from work to show us their daily routines; it was an unforgettable experience. Also, to Tico Oms and Junior Achievement, which organized this amazing event, thank you! SAS Job Shadowing participants: Michael Hsun, Yun Hoi Kim, Corey Robinson, James Fan, Alex Hoffer, Kevin Kim, Ishaan Misra, Alan Chow, Scott Swingle, Ali Ukani, Alvin Yang and Sung Hun Kang.
SAS NewsFlash – December 2008
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