Name: Alina
Company: Seaward Card (Cathay Information Group)
Seaward Card is a comprehensive human resources and management consulting firm. Its services include staffing, executive search, sustainability consulting, corporate training, HR management, and payroll outsourcing. I interned in the executive search department, where I had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with recruitment processes and the talent market.
During my internship, my main responsibilities included talent sourcing, phone screening, résumé refinement, interview coordination, offer negotiation, and candidate relationship management. I also assisted with internal project proposals and events such as job fairs. The industries I worked with ranged from technology, finance, and manufacturing to e-commerce and fintech, allowing me to quickly familiarize myself with diverse industry and role requirements. This experience strengthened my cross-disciplinary communication skills and my ability to synthesize information. Through interactions with candidates and corporate clients, I learned to approach situations from both perspectives and identify more suitable matchmaking strategies.
The biggest challenges during the internship were time management and building industry knowledge. The talent market is highly competitive, and recruitment timelines do not slow down just because I was an intern. To keep up, I developed my own progress-tracking system to stay on top of priorities while managing multiple candidates at once. I also used online resources to strengthen my understanding of industries and roles, sought advice from senior consultants, and practiced mock conversations to continuously refine my professional communication.
This experience taught me that although headhunting is performance-driven, at its core it is also about guiding candidates through their career decisions. I valued every interaction, and even when placements didn’t succeed, some candidates stayed in touch, shared updates, and even exchanged birthday wishes. These moments showed me that recruitment is not only a bridge between opportunities—it can also build long-term trust with sincerity and warmth.
Overall, this internship allowed me to gain valuable recruitment experience under high pressure and fast-paced conditions. With guidance from my manager and senior colleagues, I gradually clarified my future career direction in HR. It was one of the most important and growth-enhancing experiences of my graduate studies.
