Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

“No man is an island”

There is a saying — “No man is an island.” We’ve always heard about it but it is actually hard to understand its meaning without being in a team and experiencing challenges with teammates.

At Babson, we’ve joined a lot of teams in different classes, communicated with different people, tried to reach an agreement, and chased the same goal. But being in the team in working company actually feels different than working in a team at school. Some teammates from school might not care much about grades or not interested in the course projects. But in the team in my internship, every teammate is working on the same goal, trying to attain more customers, and discovering more resources to make the company become better. My teammates are all selected and are skillful in developing our business. I don’t need to care much about whether they’ve done work in time or whether they had the ability to complete the tasks successfully. They all have the dream to make Hooli, the start-up company, to be successful.

Because our target market is clients from Asia who will come to U.S. and look for housing, we need to collaborate with the sales team in local China to match the time. On one hand, the time difference between China and U.S. make the clients cannot reach us in their day time because we are in bed. Therefore, the sales team in China will help us to reply to clients quickly to make the clients comfortable. On the other hand, when the sales team in China wants to contact the apartments in U.S. to inquire some problems, they are unable to make a call because they cannot make the call internationally. At this time, we will help them to make the call and record the messages for them. We often created the group chats, changed the group name to make it be clear and obvious, and communicated with each other to avoid some misunderstandings. In this way, we can take care of the clients from both sides and help each other to make our company to develop more successfully.

My colleagues help me learn the importance of communication and let me know how necessary it is to have great teammates standing behind you and always being there to support you.