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This spring, I joined Morgan McKinley for a six weeks internship where I worked with their different teams. It was a very rewarding experience, which also helped me to think more concretely about my future career.  

Why working at Morgan McKinley?

Morgan McKinley is a global professional services recruitment consultancy, which connects specialist talent with leading employers across multiple industries and disciplines.

I decided to join Morgan McKinley with the hope to find out more about the recruitment industry and get insights about the Japanese recruitment market. 

What did I do at Morgan McKinley?

In the first week, I helped the Talent Acquisition (Hiring Manager) with promotion and branding. More specifically, my task was to connect with Japanese student communities currently studying at foreign universities and to promote our company and internship program. I created job descriptions, as well as a short video to promote internship opportunities.
 
From the second week, I worked as an associate consultant in five different teams (Asset Management, Financial Service (Middle/Back office), IT, HR, and Finance & Accounting).
 
My day to day responsibilities were researching some potential candidates through our database, created lists of top potential candidates to reach out to, directly called potential candidates to pitch a job and arrange meetings with the senior consultants.

Following that, I also had a chance to meet candidates that I reached out to in the first place, and find out more about their career background, interests and goals, as well as learn a lot about the very professional way of supporting candidates that Morgan McKinley consultants offer.
 
On the admin side, I contributed by writing content, translating job ads, reviewing and updating contracts information on the database, updating candidate CVs information and short-listed candidates that were suitable for the role our consultants were working on.

What did I learn through the program?

Through the program, I sharpened my sales skills and improved my communication skills.

When making phone calls for the first time, it was very challenging, and I was struggling to communicate with candidates, but I learned key phrases, ways of approaching candidates in a  very professional way, gained confidence and started feeling very comfortable speaking with candidates and introducing jobs to them.
 
I also had a chance to broaden my knowledge about the various industries and found out more about the different roles, responsibilities and career paths available to all these very talented professionals in Japan.

Moreover, before the internship, I was of the assumption that once you get a job, you needed to continue it for a long time. Unlike my expectation, I realized that many people change their position because of salary, work-life balance, working environment, career progression, etc. 
Each candidate has a different background and career goals and all consultants in Morgan McKinley supported them sincerely.
 
After spending six weeks at Morgan McKinley, I have a clear vision of my future career. It helped me understand what I am truly interested in, narrow down the industries that I am most interested in, showed me what my strengths/weaknesses are and what is essential for me and my career.
 
The working environment was also great. 
Everyone was warm and helpful to me and I would like to thank the team, especially the associate consultant’s team, my mentor, and the leadership team that made me feel very comfortable and supported me from day 1.

I would recommend an internship at Morgan McKinley with no hesitation. Please reach out to Elliott Vie from Morgan McKinley’s Talent Acquisition team to find out more about opportunities here.

(Yu Shimaoka)