Paul Liu

I got the BASF internship opportunity from a classmate referral. Prior to that, the CDT team had also recommended and referred a few other internship opportunities to me. I had worked closely with my career manager so that she knew what job functions or industries I was interested in and helped me connect with key people. The career services team helped me find the opportunity through networking events, alumni recommendation, mentorship programme, as well as direct outreach.

4 months, March to June 2022

I joined the Global Strategy and Market Intelligence team in BASF’s Dispersions and Resins division in Hong Kong. During the internship, I was involved in multiple projects, from key account analysis, to market size review, and even identifying growth opportunities for our sustainable product portfolio. Despite being an intern, I was given a lot of autonomy to work on the projects and had many opportunities to work with senior management.

The chemical industry is an entirely new and foreign field to me as I came from a finance and banking background. Since I often had to work with technical experts and senior business leaders, I had to be a quick learner by grasping technical knowledge as quickly as possible and to understand how current affairs could impact our business. I even learned Power BI from scratch with the support of my colleagues, and created a tool to analyze and visualize business performance.

The internship has boosted my confidence in navigating through unfamiliar territories at work. Although it could be daunting and stressful at first, but that is what we will have to do as we move up the ladder.