Foxconn is a public company that manufactures electronics and electronic components like iPhones and iPads.  It is also the third largest IT company by revenue and has over one million employees.   The company has offices in many different cities around the world, one of which is in Chengdu.  Here, they offer internships in business and engineering to graduate students whom they feel are qualified.

 Working as an intern at a Fortune 500 company like Foxconn is an experience unlike anything else.  According to the current manager at Foxconn’s office in Chengdu, Eric Yang, interns are able to get valuable international experience along with the opportunity to help develop the market for Foxconn in other countries.  In addition, Eric says that there are also engineering internships where interns can work on programming and other types of web design using a variety of languages.  Eric admires how interns have the confidence to travel to a foreign developing country like China for work experience and feels that other managers around the world will do.

 One current intern at Foxconn, Spencer Savalla, from Brazil, says that his internship in China has been great so far.  He says that during his short time at Foxconn, he has already learned a lot of new skills in CYGWIN, MINGW, html, JAVA, and CSS3, which are used in web design and programming.  This was all accomplished through self-learning and the help of his manager Jason Wu.  Furthermore, he has also worked on a more basic, but equally important skill, making presentations.  This is because interns at Foxconn are required to make a presentation as one of their first tasks.  Through the presentation, interns can teach their coworkers more about themselves, and how things work in their home countries.

According to Spencer, his Chinese colleagues are very friendly, and treat him as well as they would treat other Chinese coworkers, if not better.  In his time in Chengdu, Spencer believes he has matured a lot, as he is essentially alone and thus gotten better at solving his own problems.  He hopes that this experience can help him find future opportunities in China.

By Stephen Yang