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Communicating During Engineering Internships
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In this episode, Dr. Jill Fennell sits down with recent Georgia Tech graduate Keshav Pransukhka to learn more about his experience as an engineering intern and discuss advice for students going into internships for the first time.
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Show Notes and Timestamps
- 00:43 welcome and introduction
- 01:15 internship information
- 04:17 First communication expectations and challenges
- 06:23 Value of communication training in college
- 07:41 Communicating with different audiences
- 10:05 Strategies for dealing with different audiences
- 12:47 Amount of communication during internship
- 14:07 Slide Design Strategies
- 17:07 Advice for students when designing slide decks
- 20:41 Building confidence during internship work
- 23:36 Advice for students who have yet to have an internship
- 26:04 Success of communication practice
- 28:38 Advice to students starting their internships
- 30:45 What students should understand before their internship
A transcript of this episode is available here.
Episode edited by Lee Hibbard.
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Transcript
Season Three Introduction
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to season three of Communication Mechanics. I'm Jill Fennell, Web Chair and Communication Skills at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. And this season is all about communication across professional growth.
00:00:24
Speaker
How engineers build skills to navigate job fairs, public speaking, leadership, internship, and providing useful feedback. Let's get started.
Keshav's Career Journey
00:00:43
Speaker
Today we're welcoming back recent alumnus Kishav Prinsuka. Welcome, Kishav. Can you tell us what you're up to it's since your recent graduation? Yeah, thank you Jill for having me here.
00:00:55
Speaker
It's great to be back and talking to someone from Georgia Tech after so long. I have moved back to India. I am in in a city called Bangalore and I have joined as a writer at the Kent.
00:01:06
Speaker
which is a media hub and we cover business users and startups and anything related to business in India. Amazing. Well, today we're here to talk about the internship that you had while you were a Woodruff student. So can you start by telling us about your internship?
00:01:24
Speaker
Like what was your role? and What kind of work were you doing? During my time at Tech, I did two internships. One was Shark Ninja in Boston, where I was a mechanical engineering intern.
00:01:36
Speaker
And the other was at Slip Robotics in Atlanta itself, with the same role. In both the companies, I was enrolled in NPD, which is new product development, which involved lot of testing. So in both the companies, I was working on a product that they were launching.
00:01:51
Speaker
So testing it out, making sure that it's working to its expectations, making sure the KPIs are being met. And the second role was CAD. So if let's say you find something that can be improved or something that was not working well, we used to go back to drawing board you and brainstorm on how we can fix it using CAD, using experiments, using... i remember we used a lot of 3D printers at both the companies.
00:02:14
Speaker
So yeah, these two were main roles of testing out new features and trying out new features to improve the quality of the product. What were your main responsibilities?
00:02:26
Speaker
My main responsibilities at Shark Ninja, we were working on a vacuum cleaner. And one of my main responsibilities was that whenever we used to get prototypes from our factories, my role was to make sure that it's up to the expectations such as the length was correct, the width was correct, the amount of water that came out of the vacuum cleaner was apt, was up to the mark.
00:02:47
Speaker
Its cleaning performance was correct and then I used to hand it over to the sales team and marketing team for their own internal testings. Even at Slip Robotics when we used to get parts from different manufacturers and different suppliers, i used to make sure that the length is correct, it is the same strength as we wanted.
00:03:04
Speaker
I made sure that the parts that we're getting and the parts we're putting in our product is up to the market, means their expectations, it means the KPIs. The second was, as I said, testing out new products and new features.
00:03:16
Speaker
I remember in at Shark Ninja, the brush roll was not up to the mark in the vacuum cleaner. So we designed a new entire brush roll where we changed one variable for every brush roll.
00:03:26
Speaker
We printed them out, we assembled them, and then we tested it out and we found that the brush roll that we had designed was better than the original one. So the product was launched with our brush roll that my team designed.
00:03:38
Speaker
So yeah, those two were the main responsibilities and also documenting. So everything that I have done, everything that I did, presenting them to my managers, but in presenting them to CEOs, to the senior management and just keeping a record of what I've been doing so that I can present them at the end of my internship.
00:03:57
Speaker
It sounds like you interacted with a lot of different teams and departments then. Yeah, I did. It was, especially at Shark Ninja, we had offices in London, in Boston, which where where the headquarters was, and the fact he was in China.
00:04:11
Speaker
So a lot of people to interact with, a lot of time zones to handle as well.
Challenges in Professional Communication
00:04:16
Speaker
What were some of the first communication challenges or expectations that you noticed when you began the internship?
00:04:23
Speaker
Just knowing how to communicate because i might have a way of doing my presentations. I might have a way of telling my bosses or telling my managers about what I have done, but they might not prefer for it. They might think that my way is either too extensive, which is unnecessary or shallow where I need to be more detailed.
00:04:43
Speaker
So that was something that I had to fine tune. I remember at Shark Ninja, there was a certain in way they wanted the presentations to be. Image on one side, the text on the other side, up to the point because there were 80 to 90 people on the project.
00:04:57
Speaker
So you can't have 10 minutes, 15 minutes to convey your point. So you had to be very quick, very precise, up to the mark, up to the point, pin focus. So that was something that I struggled with and I had to calibrate myself.
00:05:10
Speaker
Second was time zone, as I said. We used to interact with engineers in China. we used to either write them mails early morning or late at night. So that just delayed progress and we had to wait for 10 to 12 hours to get a response.
00:05:25
Speaker
Those two were some challenges that I faced. But again, i think and spending two, three weeks at the place taught me how to what they want and what was expectation out of me. So I was able to cope with it the at the end.
00:05:40
Speaker
It sounds like you did a lot of different kinds of communications, like slides, emails. Did you do reports or what kinds of documentation did you do? I did some reports. We made some s SOPs for our testing.
00:05:54
Speaker
So I wrote down the way the experiment was to be conducted because since we had three different offices, everyone was doing the test in a very different way. The same test was being done in a very different way. So to make sure that we can compare the results, we had to make sure that the steps were correct.
00:06:10
Speaker
and it was being done in the exact same manner across the three offices. So that was one report I created. But yeah, slides, oral communication, and reports were the three main communication outputs of mine.
00:06:22
Speaker
It sounds like you did quite a bit of communication training at the Woodruff School, probably before and even during your internship. Do you think that this training helped you at all while you were navigating the new expectations in this role?
00:06:36
Speaker
I know for a fact that after four years at tech, I am confident that I can teach anyone um about my expertise or tell them about engineering, regardless of whether they have had background in engineering or not.
00:06:48
Speaker
Even at Shark Ninja, I used to tell engineering concepts to marketing teams. So they might not understand how ah vacuum cleaner exactly works. So you had to use very non-technical, very non-engineering terms to explain it to them, to make sure that you're not using a lot of engineering jargon because they might not have the context to understand it.
00:07:07
Speaker
That was something I learned at Tech. Talking to professors, talking to juniors, talking to seniors, just con conveying my ideas, asking questions to professors so that the question that you ask is also understandable.
00:07:20
Speaker
So yeah, I think those were some things that definitely helped me at my internship. And it's all about practicing. It's all about trying. I remember I used to stand in front of mirror and talk, do an extempo.
00:07:31
Speaker
I was just having the habit of talking, having the habit of Knowing what you talk what you're talking about and able to express it in simple words is what I did learn in tech. I think practice is so important.
00:07:43
Speaker
But a part of that practice, as you've mentioned too, is practicing how you want to communicate maybe even a very similar concept to different people with different levels of understanding. So yeah who were the different audiences that you needed to communicate with in these internships and how were their needs different?
Adapting Communication for Different Audiences
00:08:01
Speaker
So there were engineers who were my managers, who were direct stakeholders of my projects. They were very involved. Others were auxiliary teams, salespeople, people from marketing, product managers.
00:08:14
Speaker
They didn't care a lot about how the tech worked as long as they cared more about how does it help them in their role. So ah sales team would not want to know how a vacuum cleaner works, but he would want to know whether the brush that you have added, does it improve the cleaning? How does it improve the cleaning? Is is the cleaning more visual so that he can use that in his marketing pitch or in his sales pitch?
00:08:37
Speaker
Or for a PM, it's more about this lead to more efficiency in the completion of the project, would be able to reach the design. So those were some people that that I interacted with where I had to explain the same concept with people in different language and using different jargon.
00:08:54
Speaker
And as I said, the expectations are different. photo And using the same example for a brush roll, an engineer might want to know what exactly did you change? How is it? cleaning, helping in cleaning schools. What's the physics behind it? What's the science behind it?
00:09:08
Speaker
So yeah, those are some people that i spoke with and everyone had different expectations. Everyone wanted to take away certain slice of the entire project. So you had to be very cognizant of who are you speaking to? What do they want to hear? And giving them that information.
00:09:24
Speaker
How did you figure out what it was that different audiences wanted to hear? just asking them. I think at internships, they know that you don't know a lot and they give you lot of lot of rope, a lot of slack.
00:09:38
Speaker
So even if you go and ask them that what exactly do you want to know about the project, they would not feel bad. And I think that's better because then you're not wasting their time and you are just giving them what they want to hear.
00:09:50
Speaker
And it's better to ask them than just... you know, not ask them and assume that they want to hear something else and then the entire conversation goes to waste. So I think, yeah, that would be go up to them, ask them what they wanted to do hear and give them that information.
00:10:05
Speaker
Did you have any strategies that helped you adjust to your message for different roles like technical team members versus management? Yeah, I think the more time you spend with your manager, the more slides you make for her.
00:10:17
Speaker
She will tell you exactly that, oh, this is wrong or that is right. And you just have to be cognizant of that. i think the communication does not depend on you. it depends on the receiver. The idea that you have is already clear in your head.
00:10:30
Speaker
So you have to tell it in a way that the audience wants to receive it. In all the public policy classes that I took, we were writing memos and the professor shared that some presidents want to hear just the pinpoint. You tell them that, as Mr. President, you should do this, you should do that, and he would do it.
00:10:46
Speaker
Some presidents want the entire context. Why are we doing this? What's the history behind it? What are the implications? Why not this? Why not that? So same policy expert will have to cater to different types of approaches, different types of communication for the same information.
00:11:01
Speaker
The policy expert can't be like, oh, I'm going to communicate the way I want to do it. He has to shape himself, he has to mode himself to the president and his receiver. So I think that's what the strategy was. Spend some time with your managers, spend some time with people in different teams and understand what they want to hear, what they want to get from the conversation.
00:11:18
Speaker
It might take a while, it might take one try, two tries where you get the more feedback that you know could have done this better or communicated that better. But yeah, june I think if you're more cognizant and if you're aware of what they want to hear, it's it's just molding yourself for the to the expectations.
00:11:37
Speaker
That's really insightful. and yeah I often say that the job of the engineer is to inform decision makers. And what it sounds like you're saying is you you need to understand the way this person wants to be able to make their decision and give them that information.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, even even at the ken the place that I'm working, we do a very specific kind of stories. We want a certain scale in the company. you won <unk> One question that we ask ourselves is, why are we doing this story now? Why can't we do it six months later?
00:12:08
Speaker
Because that's what our readers want. Because it's a so it's a subscription-based news news organization. they They need to hear something or they need to read something that they can't find in a free media house.
00:12:20
Speaker
So you need to have a very deep reporting. You need to talk to a lot of people. you need to ah Articles are more long-form than briefs. so If I'm joining a media organization, I have to cater to my audience. I have to cater to my reader. I have to give to them what they expect out of me.
00:12:37
Speaker
And yeah, I think it's the same way if you ah you have to give to your managers or you have to give to your cm senior manager what they want to hear and the way they want to hear it.
Building Trust Through Communication
00:12:47
Speaker
When you first started these engineering internships, were you surprised by the amount of communication that you had to do? Yeah.
00:12:54
Speaker
Everything had to be begin be communicated, have everyone, at least my managers had to be kept in loop as an engineer, as an intern especially, because it takes time for them to build the trust, especially if involved in very critical projects, very, if you're being given those that a full-time engineer would do.
00:13:12
Speaker
They have to be in touch, they have to be in the loop because if something goes south, you are the intern, the manager would be caught hold that you know, you you messed it up and it's your responsibility.
00:13:24
Speaker
Therefore, I think there's extra layer of communication or extra emphasis on communication that gets put. so It's understandable because you're a student, you're 19 years old, 20 years old, you don't know a lot about engineering, and you might not know what you're doing.
00:13:36
Speaker
This might be your first job, out of college or during college. So I remember everything had to be kept a track of. i I used to write weekly summaries of what I have done that previously I shared with my manager.
00:13:49
Speaker
Eventually, I didn't have to do it because she developed a trust in me. But initially, to develop that trust and for the manager to also trust you with such critical projects, you have to be extra careful and go go an extra mile to always tell her in the loop, keep in the loop, tell her what you've been doing.
00:14:07
Speaker
We've talked in the past, you've mentioned that you had to make a lot of decisions surrounding slide design and how you wanted to design slides to deliver information to specific audiences.
00:14:19
Speaker
What did you learn about how to design slides in a professional setting? In engineering, at least they prefer more of, I think and i think it's just a factor of how the engineering profession is.
00:14:33
Speaker
It's better to have pictures and videos instead text because it's easier to explain a concept concept or, let's say if I'm talking about an experiment, if I have a picture of the setup of the experiment, it's easier for my viewers or my listeners to understand it than if I just have text and I talk about it.
00:14:51
Speaker
So that was something that i incorporated where I took a lot of pictures, added pictures in my slide decks. In other words, just again, I think this can differ from company to company, from manager to manager, but my managers emphasized on being on the point.
00:15:07
Speaker
No fluff, just facts, and just data, just figures, just numbers. And they wanted less of text and more of you talking, because if you have more of text on your slides, the readers confused whether they should read the text first or should they listen to you.
00:15:23
Speaker
So they prefer that you have information on the slides that support what you're talking about, but the main show or the main highlight of your presentation should be you talking than the slides themselves.
00:15:37
Speaker
That really corroborates what people say about communication and slides in general is that in a presentation, you are the presentation. The slides are just visual aid.
00:15:49
Speaker
ah They're there to be a supplementary, but people are there to hear you. Yeah, that's true. I think that's what, and this is true for anything, you and even if you're doing a presentation in a personal capacity, in a class, that has always been my motive that slides are just the side character, but the main role is being played by me and what I'm talking about.
00:16:11
Speaker
And slides just helped me in getting my point to across. Would you say that your ideas about what makes for a good presentation changed over the course of this internship? It did, because I, again, this was these were my first job experiences. Until then, I had created slides for myself.
00:16:29
Speaker
I don't remember making slides in my initial classes as well, my first year classes as well. So I had a very certain way of doing presentations where i thought I had to overload my slides with information, but that's something that I realized is not a a good practice.
00:16:45
Speaker
So in these 12 months, six months at both internships, it has come to a ah stage where I am the presenter, as you said, I am the one who's talking and slides are just...
00:16:57
Speaker
more of images, less of text, more of headings, more of talking points and less of like bullet points of everything that you are going to talk about. Do you have any advice or current students who maybe haven't had an internship on what they should think about or what they should be doing when they're trying to build more like real world slides?
Visual Communication Techniques
00:17:21
Speaker
Look at TED Talks. I think TEDx does a lot of presentations and their presentations are very simple. It's like the speaker might put one slide and the slide just gives them gives the audience some context of what he's going to talk about.
00:17:37
Speaker
Some pictures, some headings, some titles. But it's the speaker who explains that slide and the speaker is the one who gets the majority of attention. That could be something that you do that you listen to great speakers, great presenters and see how they do it.
00:17:53
Speaker
And another could be just creating slides because I remember but lot lot of our classes at the end, you did create slides. My ME 1670 used have to create a slide of your final project.
00:18:05
Speaker
2110, you make slides. So you can be like, I'll take the initiative in the team so that you get some experience in making slides. It's very essential. And just trying to get as many opportunities as you can to make slides.
00:18:18
Speaker
In a club, if you're doing a presentation, if you're hosting a club meeting or organization meeting, create slides. Could you describe slide or visual that you created that you are particularly proud of or that maybe it took a couple revisions to get right?
00:18:34
Speaker
At Slip Robotics, we had to do a presentation about us. At the end of the internship, I had to do a summary of my internship. And in one slide, they wanted me talk about myself, give them more information about who I am, my personal life.
00:18:49
Speaker
but I just had pictures of my life across different stages of my friends, of me, of me tracking, of me playing football, other stuff. And i so I just talk about each and every picture.
00:19:01
Speaker
So instead of, you know, telling that, oh, I'm Keshav, I'm 23 years old, and having those texts on the slides, I just pictures and talked about Every picture and and every picture i had a different meaning. Some were with my friends, some were with my but my family, some were me doing things that I love.
00:19:18
Speaker
that was a great way of telling about myself. And I've been using that everywhere when I have to talk about myself. Just add pictures of the things you love doing, the things that you you care about, and just talk about them. That's a better way of...
00:19:32
Speaker
introducing yourselves than just giving them small talk information about who you are, where you from, what are you studying, with call which college you go you you go to Oh, definitely. That sounds like a great design because, you know, especially whenever people are asking for that kind of information, they want to get like a sort of quick holistic picture of you, something that they can remember. But if you just yeah of shout bullet data points about your, you know, your age and where you're from, that's going to be a lot harder to remember and give less of a cohesive takeaway. Yeah.
00:20:06
Speaker
it's It's also a very great ice-breaking moment as well. People get to know your hobbies, the things you like, things you dislike. And it's easier for other employees to come up to you and ask questions than... i mean, i as as a full-time engineer, I might not know what to ask my intern if he tells me he's from Michigan and he went to UMICH.
00:20:28
Speaker
I read that in your resume already, like there's nothing more that I can use to build a conversation So it's a great way of breaking ice and just introducing yourself beyond work.
00:20:40
Speaker
Do you think that your confidence as an engineer and as a communicator grew over the course of your internship?
Boosting Confidence Through Feedback
00:20:47
Speaker
It did, definitely. When you get feedback and when you realize that people that you're communicating to actually understand you're trying to communicate and they get what you're trying to tell them, that's a great feeling because engineering in in itself, it's a technical field.
00:21:06
Speaker
Not everyone understands it. unless you have an academic background in it, it's very difficult to explain engineering science concepts to non-engineers. So if people, if you are able to explain your concepts and drive your point forth, I think that's a great feeling.
00:21:20
Speaker
I remember someone, I, one of my mentors, that you might have the best of ideas and best of minds, but if you can't communicate your idea and if you can't tell other people yeah yeah supposedly a great idea, what's the point of that idea?
00:21:34
Speaker
So I think it's more important to know how to communicate than getting an idea is the first step. The second step is telling the world about your idea.
00:21:45
Speaker
um but If you don't know how to do it, it doesn't make sense. and i yeah When I was able to communicate my ideas, and when I was able to tell my managers what exactly I wanted to do and they understood what I was trying to do.
00:21:57
Speaker
um That was a great feeling because if they didn't understand what I was trying to do, they would not let me go forward with it. They would not let me do that thing in the first place. um So I, you know, just non non-verbal signs of they nodding your their head and agreeing with you, something that boosts my confidence.
00:22:14
Speaker
And it's just a matter of practice where, again, and the more you do it, the better you you get. and yeah And I think another quote or another motto that I live with is I always, i think it's better to prioritize quantity over quality, but especially in a very creative field, because I might want to write the best of article and I would spend 30 days on it.
00:22:36
Speaker
But it's better if I write one article every day and improve it because Oh, there's always scope of improvement. and You might take 30 days to write something, but can it can always get better. So it's better if you put something out, get in the habit of creating content, get in the habit of communicating, and getting better at it again and again, getting feedback and iterating on it, than waiting for that that perfect or that accurate. No, if you wait for a perfect communication, then you're going to really miss out on the moment that communication is needed.
00:23:07
Speaker
Yeah. And the way you get to a perfect communication is doing it again and again. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes practice. It doesn't come in like, it's not a cathartic moment where you've spent 30 days on writing your brief or your memo and it comes out to be perfect.
00:23:22
Speaker
So yeah, I think it's just at internships, I, every day I made slides, every day I spoke to my manager and I became a better communicator at the end of it than when I started my internships.
00:23:36
Speaker
What would you say then to perhaps early engineering students who haven't had an internship who want to argue that the science or the data speaks for itself? They don't need to practice communication. That's, I can tell you, at jobs, you would rather want to be a person who's average and talks a lot than a genius who doesn't talk a lot.
00:24:00
Speaker
Because you the company needs to know that you're doing work. If you don't tell them that you're doing work, if you don't communicate that this these are things you have done, the company would think that you're the first one to get fired when there's a layoff.
00:24:12
Speaker
And that's true for everywhere. I have in my company and in my internships, the most talkative people were considered to be the most efficient people. And they might not do anything. But if you can convince the world that you are doing work or that you are being productive, that's better than you letting your work speak for yourself. Sure, that would be the ideal. that's The world is unfair.
00:24:35
Speaker
The ideal case would be that you you you do the work and the work speaks to yourself. But in a large organization, that doesn't happen all the time. So it's your responsibility that you can convey your ideas, you speak up doing interviews, you speak up doing stand-ups.
00:24:51
Speaker
Otherwise, will face the grind when when it comes down. That's my personal opinion. i might might be know I mean, it sounds very accurate to things that I've heard from our other alumni.
00:25:03
Speaker
But I just think that that's a tough advice to take. um If you know you're going into engineering because you don't necessarily like to talk a lot and you just want to to do math. But engineering is, it seems fundamentally human. It's about you know human problems and communicating the solutions to those problems to other humans. Yeah.
00:25:22
Speaker
That's Joanne. Even beyond engineering, it's true for everything. In a group of friends, the person who talks a lot is the charming one, people who want to spend time with. If you're into it, if you don't talk a lot, you're not someone who who's considered very charming or people who want to hang out with you.
00:25:40
Speaker
That's my, again, my personal opinion. i might my i might be wrong, but ah sure, you do work. I'm not saying that you just don't do anything and just talk at workplace, but you also have to make sure that What you're thinking gets across to your managers, gets across to your colleagues.
00:25:55
Speaker
What you have done gets across to your manager. Otherwise, you would assume that your work speaks for yourself, but most of the times it it does not. but You've talked a lot about how you really think practice is very important for communication and how you did that a lot when you were a student
Overcoming Public Speaking Fears
00:26:13
Speaker
here.
00:26:13
Speaker
Do you think that that is what made you successful in and being able to navigate communication expectations during your internship? For sure. i I used to be scared of turning my mic on and speaking.
00:26:26
Speaker
I thought that I might just say something wrong. I might just sluster and people will make fun of me. But you also have to understand that the only way to get out of it or get out of your fear of kind of talking is by jumping right into it.
00:26:42
Speaker
How else would you fix it? ah Sure, you might be very strong-headed that, you know, tomorrow I'll speak and tomorrow I'll open my mouth in the meetings. But if you don't actually do it, you will never get over your feeling of that fear.
00:26:58
Speaker
So it is about practicing. Sure, the first few times you might fruster, people might make fun of you, but who cares? It's not school, it's not college. are all professionals.
00:27:09
Speaker
They understand you're an intern and they understand that you might mess up. So you already have a lot of room for yourself. So might as well use that leverage and use that room that you get. Because...
00:27:20
Speaker
ah You'd rather underconfident as an intern and get over your fear than be underconfident as a full-time, because then you have so much more to lose. It's about the long game. Exactly, yeah, because I remember and I saw this entire XX thread where everyone was posting how they messed up as an intern.
00:27:40
Speaker
So it is universally expected that interns mess up and people are okay with it. And that's how you learn. You learn on the job, you learn by your mistakes, you learn by messing up. So might as well just, you know,
00:27:52
Speaker
do it just Sure, you might say something embarrassing, but who cares? These people forget about it. They have so many more things to care about than one intern that said something wrong in in a stand-up meeting.
00:28:06
Speaker
and so it sounds very It sounds very, very easy to do um than when actually comes to it, but you just have to do it. You just have to find something in yourself that pushes you to do it, that ah makes you turn on the mic.
00:28:19
Speaker
And I remember every time I turned on my mic and every time I said something, I felt more confident that, you know, I thought I might be bad at it. I did it and I'm not bad at it. So... My confidence kept going again and again again and again.
00:28:32
Speaker
And yeah, i think as I've been saying, practice is the key. That's that's what worked for me. Let's focus on what advice you have for other students. So what advice would you give to another student heading into their first engineering internship, especially as it relates to communication?
00:28:52
Speaker
Practice. I think let's say you few, you're scared of speaking um and you have a presentation that you need to do tomorrow, just ask your friend to sit with you and do a mock presentation in front of him.
00:29:05
Speaker
Sit in front of a mirror and talk in front of a mirror. Record yourself talking. I remember um There was this one reel on Instagram that I saw because TikTok is banned here.
00:29:16
Speaker
we can see more of Instagram than TikTok. um He said that you turn on your camera and record yourself speak. The first just listen to the audio.
00:29:27
Speaker
That will tell you you're speaking. Second time, just listen to look at the video without the audio. That will tell you your non-verbal sense. And try to improve it every day.
00:29:39
Speaker
So that could be one key where you... record yourself saying and look at it how how it looks um ah from an former audience point of view. That might give you confidence, that might give you some practice so that you don't do the same mistakes you did on your on your presentation the next day.
00:29:57
Speaker
um Second could be writing it down. I remember Amazon or someone told me that in Amazon, if you pitch an idea, they want you to write it down first and then pitch it. Because some idea might sound very, might make sense in my head, but when you actually write it down, when you actually have to use words and make it cohesive, it might not make any sense.
00:30:17
Speaker
So that could be one practice where if you Figure out how you're going to structure the way you're going to convey this information. Yeah, just write it down. Like if you had to submit a memo about it, how would you what you would write about. Because am I might think that something makes sense in my head.
00:30:34
Speaker
But if I'm not able to write it down and put it across, then it's just an not abstract idea that does not have any logic to it. That could be ah one of the advice. What's and something about communication engineering that you wish more students would understand before they take their internship or step into the workplace?
Audience-Centric Communication
00:30:53
Speaker
You have to communicate according to your listener. if If your manager likes voice notes instead of text, you cannot send her text just because you're not comfortable with the voice note.
00:31:07
Speaker
A, because she's your manager, so you have to respect what she wants. And second, ah You are human right she might not understand what you're trying to say. If she prefers voice note, if she prefers a phone call,
00:31:21
Speaker
If she gets a text, she might take some time to understand it. she It might rub her in the wrong way. um So you have to communicate the way the company wants you to communicate.
00:31:33
Speaker
All these companies have a certain template. They want a certain text. They want a certain font. They want their logo and or like a what watermark at the back of the slide. If only you don't use it, you will be called out for it. So you have to follow the guidelines that are already set.
00:31:50
Speaker
um If you don't do it, ah you will be at loss. You can't say that, oh, just because i communicate a certain way and I like using metaphors and I like using narration and I like using big words.
00:32:05
Speaker
That's not going to cut for them. Yeah, I think just having the ability to understand who you're talking to and communicating your information in the way they wanted want to get it is what hope you do. Absolutely. It's all about usability. If you you spend all this time in the lab doing tests and you want that information to actually matter, then it ultimately comes down to who is it you're communicating this to and how can you get them to see that this is usable.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah. even This is something that I was talking to my manager yesterday. um And this is something i also learned in 3057 with you and at four in 4056.
00:32:45
Speaker
When you write a report, you write a statement and then you write reasons to prove that statement. And that's your first point. Then there's second point and that's the third point. It's like a very structured,
00:32:55
Speaker
argument that I believe this because of this, this, this. You can't do that at least at the end. They want a very certain type of writing. So I can't tell the manager that just because I am an engineer and just because I've started, i i learned writing in a certain way, I won't write the way you want me to write. They'll fire you, they'll find in they'll find a and an engineer or a journalist that can write the way they want them to write.
00:33:20
Speaker
um So you have to be very flexible, very um versatile in your communication skills. Even in the memo writing competition and the poster making competition that Voterschool does, there's a certain format of a memo, there's a certain format of PSA compared to the last competition.
00:33:45
Speaker
You have to follow that format, you have to write the way every PSA in the past had been written. um So you need to have that versatility about tailoring your communication to the format, your audience and the context of your communication.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's great advice for people who are entering an internship because different places will have different expectations, especially for different genres, some of which you might not have ever used before, like a voice message. I've never sent a memo, a voice memo before, but I could, if starting the internship and if that was one of their expectations, I could listen to others and quickly sort of figure out what the expectations are. Yeah.
00:34:29
Speaker
I think that's just be very nimble on the way you communicate and not being very hard bent on it. Having the flexibility on how you communicate um and as I've been saying, just tailoring it to the audience because the audience is more important than the communicator in a Which I guess that is something that was the way that we write in 30, 57, 40, 56 is very American style.
00:34:59
Speaker
That is very direct. This is our statement. This is our reasons. And that in international communication, that's not always what's expected. yeah um So it makes sense that you're, you know you're working in and a different country and they have different expectations for the way in which you convince someone of an argument.
00:35:17
Speaker
But what remains consistent is the most important part that you have talked on a lot today, which is audience. You have to know who it is you're talking to and the way they want to be able to use this information.
00:35:31
Speaker
That's true. I think, yeah, that that's the entire thesis or the entire through line of my conversation today. You have to prioritize your audience and you have to communicate according to them and according to their needs.
00:35:46
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jill. Thank you for having me.