Adriel Tjokrosaputro, a fifth semester Music Business student interning with Warner Music in Indonesia, shares his thoughts about the importance of corporate culture when considering an internship.

“You three! Go to the pantry right now!” My supervisor shouted at me and the other two interns military-style. Yet, we silently ran and smiled. Three minutes later, we walked out carefully. My fellow intern, Aji, had a fancy chocolate cake on his hand with 20 lighted rainbow candles. Ten steps later, Warner Music Indonesia exploded into the song “Happy Birthday Dear Anggi.” Following Indonesian tradition, the birthday girl was given the opportunity to give the first piece to her most beloved co-worker.Turned out the person was my supervisor, Ms. Linda. She laughed and cried.

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Adriel Tjokrosaputro, a fifth semester Music Business student interning with Warner Music in Indonesia, shares his thoughts on taking charge of the internship search process and how he secured an overseas internship

In the first week, I assisted mainly the Marketing Department with administrative tasks, including re-organizing and cataloging tracks and artworks for 11 local artists held under WMI. Even with 45 hours of internship/week, I was not able to finish the work until the very last hour on Friday. Since Wednesday, I had decided to work on the project at home as well, approximately 2 hours/night. On Friday, I submitted everything for review to my supervisor and she was really pleased. “Wah! Cepet banget!” she said, which means, “Wow! That’s quick!” in Indonesian.

As a minor project, my supervisor also asked me to make promotional materials for a new music video of a new single by a local band. For this particular project, I worked with the other 3 interns that are currently interning at the company. It is very nice that my supervisor gave me a group project, as this is a great opportunity to mingle with the other interns.

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Adriel Tjokrosaputro, a fifth semester Music Business student interning with Warner Music in Indonesia, shares his thoughts on taking charge of the internship search process and how he secured an overseas internship

After countless internship applications, face-to-face interviews, and phone discussions, it has come to my attention that many internship sites in the U.S. like to do this thing that I often call “The Limbo.” This means that after the interviews, even though they promised to inform me the week after, they did not give me neither acceptance nor rejection. To those who I followed up with, they simply responded, “At this point, we have not made our decisions…” Some even did not follow up with me for two months.

This was made worse by the fact that I was rejected for my dream internship in Washington, D.C. with one of the largest live show promoters in the world.The internship matches well with my career goal, the interviewer is very respectful, and the whole program was just fantastic. Unfortunately, after three rounds of interviews, it became apparent that I did not fulfill the criteria the best compared to the others.

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