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04  - Request for job rotation / increased duties

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04  - Request for job rotation / increased duties

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I emailed my supervisor requesting for a job rotation / increased duties. She replied that an arrangement would be made to facilitate my request. I feel my growth as an intern has stunted.

I want to learn more as there is so much more that can be learned here. Other than that, work goes on as usual for booking duties.

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Whenever there are issues surrounding containers, the PTO team is contacted. PTO is another internal department of Hapag-Lloyd under the Operations department. They are responsible for the movement and safe being of containers 24/7. Therefore, issue like container not loaded on the vessel must be dealt with by liaising with PTO.

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My request for job rotation was fulfilled. Starting tomorrow, my duties include documentation tasks and I would be under the guidance of a customer service staff whose main responsibility is as such.

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There are three types of Bill of Lading (BL) that are used in the shipping line and maritime industry like Hapag-Lloyd.

First, Original Bill of Lading, Seaway Bill and Telex Release. Each of these BL types are checked in a similar process but released in a different manner. BL can be issued to customers in three types, draft, copy and original. BL draft is sent to customer’s email automatically once their booking has been confirmed.

Customers would then need to approve of the said draft in Hapag-Lloyd’s website as the documents could only be released once the vessel has sailed. For today, I would be shadowing and jotting down notes from my guiding staff.

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Documentation learning duties continued.

Basically, Seaway Bill or SWB for short is a type of bill of lading document released to customers as proof of contract carriage and receipt of goods. In terms of ownership, only OBL holds that kind of endorsement responsibility.

However, SWB releases are much faster to be done compared to OBL and SWB releases do not require the presenting of any physical documents.

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OBL or original bill of lading release at origin means that the document is physically printed at the office location of the pod of loading (POL) country of a shipment. Example, there is a vessel carrying a customer’s shipment travelling from Thailand to Colombia and the customer is requesting for OBL printed at origin, meaning that the OBL would be printed at Hapag-Lloyd’s office location in either Bangkok or Laem Chabang (but most oftenly Bangkok).

The third party logistics provider or freight forwarding agent that are contracted with their client (shipper) would have to pick up the said printed documents and those documents would have to be at the port of discharge country (POD), which is Germany for the cargo to be released to the consignee.

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15  - Internal job posting for Cargo Operations interview 

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15  - Internal job posting for Cargo Operations interview 

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Today, I applied for an internal position in the operations department, the position is called Coordinator Operation Steering Support. After submitting my application through my manager’s endorsement, I was pleasantly surprised that the HR department senior manager inquired through Teams messaging whether I would be interested in another position within the operations department, which is the Cargo Operations.

After my interview which lasted over half hour with the Cargo Operations manager and Senior Human Resources manager, I felt somewhat pleased because even if I do not succeed for the position, at the very least I had the chance to interview for a position within the company and obtain a very valuable interview experience. They said they would be informing me of the results by next week.

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OBL release at destination is essentially when the BL document is released at Port of Destination. OBL printed at destination is the opposite of OBL origin, where the document is directly printed at the country the shipment is heading towards. For example, if there is a shipment from Belgium to Malaysia, instead of the document printed at Hapag-Lloyd’s Belgium office and the shipper picking it up there, the document is instead released at Hapag-Lloyd’s Malaysia office and a representative will pick up the documents here.

OBL printed at destination saves time in obtaining and releasing the shipper’s cargo. Of course, a certain extra fee is included and this is only viable if there are representatives of the shipper to release their cargo at the port of the destination country.

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24 - Completed assigned "Salesforce Case Management - Sales" WBT

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24 - Completed assigned "Salesforce Case Management - Sales" WBT

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25 - Completed assigned "Equipment Forecast" WBT

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25 - Completed assigned "Equipment Forecast" WBT

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26 - Q2 Intern Sharing Session with senior executives and directors

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26 - Q2 Intern Sharing Session with senior executives and directors

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A presentation was conducted from each group of interns of the intake quarter at around 4 p.m. My group's presentation was about 'Career Development and Learning Opportunities'. The sharing session between the interns and the higher ups of the company marked the near end of the internship.

At the end of the presentation, feedback and commenting session was given by the executives of our presentations. Also, we were awarded of our internship certificate for the completion of internship at the company. Finally a photo taking session to end the event at 5 p.m.

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A telex release is a process used in shipping to simplify paperwork. Normally, when goods are shipped, the original bill of lading (a document that proves ownership of the goods) is required for the cargo to be released at the destination.

Example, if there is a shipment from China to Indonesia,  with a telex release instead of physically sending the original document like OBL printed at origin or destination, , Hapag-Lloyd sends a message to its Indonesia office which is the port of destination, instructing them to release the cargo without needing the original document. This speeds up the process and reduces the hassle of handling physical paperwork.

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I did not get the internal position. Human resources did not relay any news nor updates even after a couple of weeks waiting. I found out through my fellow internship friend, who is in the Transport Dispatch, a  sub-department of the Operations Department. Makes sense, since her internship work is much closer related in terms of job description and activities. I am not sad that I didn't get the position. It was an experience gained from a real-life job interview. However, I am upset that there was no communication about the position even though human resources would give an update post event.

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02 -  Completed assigned "Salesforce Case Management" WBT.

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02 -  Completed assigned "Salesforce Case Management" WBT.

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This WBT will support the pooled core sales team to learn about the usage of Case Management for Sales in Salesforce, in order to handling cases (i.e., queries) coming from Core Customers Segment

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For this month, my direct supervisor and cluster manager, Kavitha would assign me web-based training using Hapag-Lloyd Academy in order for me to be accustomed to the FIS2 and Salesforce system software. There would be new WBT every time I finish the previous one.

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06 - Completed assigned "International Sanctions" WBT.

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06 - Completed assigned "International Sanctions" WBT.

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07 - Completed assigned "FIS2 LCL Consolidation" WBT

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07 - Completed assigned "FIS2 LCL Consolidation" WBT

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For this WBT, I learned how to:
-Search for LCL bookings
-Link LCL bookings to a Consolidate booking
-Separate LCL bookings from Consolidate bookings

LCL bookings contain only cargo and need to be loaded into a container. For the equipment you need to create a Consolidated booking and link the LCL booking to the equipment booking.

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09 -  Completed assigned "Equipment Monitoring"  WBT

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09 -  Completed assigned "Equipment Monitoring"  WBT

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Time of work

8.30 a.m - 5.30 p.m, no Overtime

Break time

12.00 p.m - 2.00 p.m

Annual Leaves

4 days total

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15 - Customer Service Department Town Hall

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15 - Customer Service Department Town Hall

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A townhall was conducted by the whole customer service department into the reporting of performances, planning anf future initiatives to be taken by the company. One of the main talking point take took an hour was the company's latest project, the Gemini project which if the joint vessel sharing collaboration between Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk to be implemented next year.

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16 - Completed assigned "FIS2 S3000 for Customer Service Booking" WBT

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16 - Completed assigned "FIS2 S3000 for Customer Service Booking" WBT

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The purpose of this session is for the human resources (HR) department to gather feedback from the fellow interns in terms of their duties and progression within the company. The HR manager, Shin Yi would ask each one of us our duties and whether such duties meet our expectations prior to joining the company.

Every intern is gathered in one of Hapag-Lloyd available meeting rooms. Interns from multiple departments would share their fresh experience and voice out our opinions about settling down into the environment.

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23 - Application for temporary customer service position 

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23 - Application for temporary customer service position 

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There is an opening inside the company which I would like to try mu luck. It is the Customer Service contract position for five months until November as one of the permanent staff is due in labour.

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24 - Completed assigned "Bil of Lading Basics" WBT

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24 - Completed assigned "Bil of Lading Basics" WBT

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BSF charge stands for "BL Surrender Fee" in which BL means bill of lading. This type of fee is charged to clients that require BL to be surrendered at port of destination countries.

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28  - Completed assigned "FIS2 Special Product Handling" WBT

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28  - Completed assigned "FIS2 Special Product Handling" WBT

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All of the interns and some newly enlisted Hapag-Lloyd employees join a visiting trip to WestPort, Klang. The purpose of the visit is to give exposure about the operations of container handling in a container handling port facility like WestPort. The company rented a bus for the visit. The visit is a half-day trip. Departure was at around 9 a.m. The trip took about an hour to arrive.

We arrived at approximately 10 a.m. and were greeted by the WestPort representatives. We were then guided to a meeting room for a briefing and presentation session. Breakfast was kindly provided. Then at estimated 11.30 a.m., we headed out to the container yard and port for sightseeing. After that, we returned to WestPort’s office building and headed back to Hapag-Lloyd at 1 p.m. We reached back at the office around 2 p.m.

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30  - Completed assigned "FIS2 Reporting" WBT

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30  - Completed assigned "FIS2 Reporting" WBT

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Today, SWB release would no longer be part of my duties. This is due to change in the duty responsibility as GCC will now take over such duties. The workload in the CS department is getting a bit too much for the staff to handle as cases now could reach 800 per day. Simple duties like SWB release and invoice handling would all be delegated towards GCC from now on as QSC would no longer be releasing SWB on the customers’ behalf. Instead, QSC would be in charge of scanning and categorising  the cases based on origin country and SWB release-fit to GCC in order to decrease the workload.

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02 - Request for job rotation put on hold until further notice

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02 - Request for job rotation put on hold until further notice

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This would be the last month of my internship at this company. I requested for another job rotation like I did in the previous month to my manager. I want to learn as much as I can so that I would be better equipped with technical knowledge after leaving the company. However, due to the heavy workload experienced by the staff, there is inadequate free time and manpower to provide interns like myself another job rotation opportunity and I was informed to just continue with the duties at the current moment until further notice.

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03 - Customer Service Department Town Hall 2

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03 - Customer Service Department Town Hall 2

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At around 5.30 p.m., the Customer Service Director, Moon Hak gave a 30-min presentation that concerns one crucial agenda. The Customer Service Department would be reorganised as some or most members from each cluster would be reshuffled and repositioned, with staff and managers alike.  For me, as an intern there was a lot of corporate and technical jargon that I didn’t understand the reason why this is being implemented. However, what I understood is that such reorganisation would take place after my internship period ends, which is on the 2nd of August, therefore doesn't concern me for as much.

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I realised something about documentation duties after a while. Depending on whether the customers that request BL is cash or credit term affects on how the documents are released. For example, cash term customers must settle the invoice payments before the release of any documents to them. While, BL could be released to credit terms customers so long as the container has been loaded and the vessel has sailed. Also, credit term customers could request for invoice after the document releasing process due to they are on credit basis.

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I think I could move on any opportunity in the job rotation as there is no progress in this request. Other than Booking and Documentation duties in which I am doing, the only one left is Import. I heard from my intern friend from another cluster who extended his time with the company through contract basis, Import duties are much more volume heavy, labour intensive and time consuming in terms of solving each case.

This is because Import duties are never ending as importing shipments from around the world discharging at Malaysia’s ports would have to go through Import and only Import for any type of customer and operational engagement.

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15 - Completed assigned "Verified Gross Mass-Basic" WBT

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15 - Completed assigned "Verified Gross Mass-Basic" WBT

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16 - Completed assigned "Hapag-Lloyd Global Code of Ethics" WBT

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16 - Completed assigned "Hapag-Lloyd Global Code of Ethics" WBT

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19 - Completed assigned "FIS2 Political Unit" WBT

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19 - Completed assigned "FIS2 Political Unit" WBT

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Jia Jia, senior coordinator of the human resources department who is on of the persons in charge of the interns contacted and offered me a contract position in the customer service department. Due to the increased workload in the upcoming project to be initiated in the upcoming months, one of the objectives is to bring in as much hands as possible in order to tackle the situation.

With that, I am considered lucky even though it's just a contract position. I gratefully accepted the offer as it is a stepping stone.

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Final say

The internship program at Hapag-Lloyd is a good opportunity to learn basic and simple responsibilities in the day-to-day activities of a shipping industry. However, regarding employment opportunities for interns at the end of our internship period is not guaranteed for the company to accept us as permanent. This due to such employment opportunities is based on company staff headcount or number of retained employees. In other words, interns would be given the chance to work as an employee only if there is an open position for the specific or related role that we are already interning for.

Therefore, this poses discouragement for interns as we know for certain that our futures are uncertain at the company. Knowing this, it is difficult to be motivated into our duties as our responsibilities within the company are close to none. The possibility of interns continuing at the company after our internship is not nil but disappointingly low.

Although, with all of that being said, Hapag-Lloyd is a very good company as I believe it should be the standard of how an MNC is run in terms of employee satisfaction ans well as benefits. I thank the company with everything that they have done for me and for my development.

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I reached my workplace at around 7 o’ clock. Work Time starts at 8.30. I entered the workplace building at around 8.15. Approached and informed the building management that it was my first day. Was given a temporary building key card. The key card is necessary to travel in and out as well as inside the building. Each floor of the building is occupied by different companies and some companies occupy more, like Hapag-Llyod.

All employees that reside in the building possess two different key cards, one for the Bousteador building access and the other for the company floor access. The building’s floors are reachable through multiple lifts that are accessible by scanning the mentioned building key card and then inputting a company’s floor number.

As I reached Hapag-Llyod’s floor, a scanning of the company key card was required to access the company floor area. Upon entering and greeted by the front desk, I was redirected into a meeting room where other interns were also waiting for the intern induction process. The induction briefing was conducted by human resources coordinators where 4 other interns attended it (three of them are also UUM interns).

There, we were handed our electronic equipment like laptops, chargers and mouse by the company IT staff. We also were guided by the said IT staff in registering our company emails, usernames and passwords. After that, the human resources coordinators gave us a tour of the company floor areas. Hapag-Lloyd has three floors in total, each placing different departments and functions. Then, the induction process was done and we all went to our own separate departments.

First day is always slow. I was introduced to my responsibilities very slowly in order to acclimate to the surrounding working environment. My workplace supervisor placed my learning and mentor-mentee ships under a senior intern from UCSI University, Tarvin. On the first day, I would just listen and jot down notes from Tarvin about the tasks and responsibilities that he has done for the past 4 months, since I would be taking over once his internship is done in the next 3 weeks, which is on the 19th.

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Training with Tarvin continues. In Booking, I learned about two duties, confirmation and cancellation. Confirmation is a confirmed booking by a customer regarding a shipment. Cancellation is the opposite where customers would request their shipment to be cancelled. For now, I just learned and observed Tarvin since my Salesforce account is still in the process of registration.

My department is the customer service department. We were told that it is the biggest department compared to all other departments. In Hapag-Lloyd, there are Customer Service (CS), Operatios (OPS), Business Administration (BA), AO, RPA and Human Resource and Admin departments (HR). The customer service (CS) department comprises five different clusters with similar functions but different responsibilities. They are namely Cluster 1 through Cluster 5. My designated cluster is Cluster 3 Booking (CSB Cluster 3). In each cluster, there are three distinct groups of duties which are Booking, Documentation and Import.

In all clusters, the CS department uses two necessary softwares that integrate information and communication management capabilities, Salesforce and FIS2. Salesforce is the main source of communication platform between customers and Hapag Llyod internal bodies. FIS2 is an integrated data information module used to manage and facilitate the movement of freights and cargoes. Both of these go hand-in-hand in the CS department activities and operations.

FIS2 is predominantly used in the entirety of Hapag-Llyod business operations but Salesforce is used mainly by the CS department. FIS2 software is a module of multiple different functions. Booking confirmation uses only one function, which is ‘S8100 Booking Detail’. (pic) Booking confirmation is basically just the updating of information in the FIS2. Customers would send email at Salesforce and CS would update the confirmation in FIS2.

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Continue training with Tarvin about booking cancellations with S8100.

Formally introduced myself to the Customer Service Cluster 3 staff and involved myself in the weekly team briefing. Every employee works on site or in the office for three days per week, while the other two is Work From Home (WFH). Wednesdays are compulsory for every employee to physically attend work in the office. Therefore, there would be meetings and briefing on every Wednesday and additionally on any other weekday depending on the situation.

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Learned about a booking cancellation scenario in which the booking number is not included in the email, but other useful information is provided by customers to find it. Other FIS2 functions have to be  used to do so, which are S8000 and V2500. These functions are used to look into booking in more detail.

Since this branch of HL services Southeast Asia Region (ASE), Southeast Asia countries like MY, SG, TH, ID, and VN are under its domain of facilitation. The CS department’s employees are distributed evenly in terms of the number of locals  and multinationals.  All of the multinationals are either Thais or Vietnamese who can professionally communicate in their mother tongues and English.

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Booking confirmation is the simplest responsibility in CS as it does not concern in replying customer emails or communicating with coworkers for its completion. However, it could be a learning curve and confusing at first because different customers and countries use similar but at the same time multiple keyword variations. For example, most of the time customers would send an email written “This booking is confirmed”, which is the most textbook keyword. Other variations include short forms like “Bkg firm” which have the same meaning. In other times, there would be shorter forms like “Cfm”, “Confirm” and “Firm” for confirmed booking and one of these keywords would be the only thing in a customer’s email. Other phrases also include “Confirm shipment”, “Will load as plan”, “Keep the space” and “Can catch this sail”.

There are actually other previous processes that would take place before and after Booking Confirmation. Therefore, customers would indicate certain phrases for an action to be taken by them. Phrases like “Will gate in container before CY cutoff once SI submitted”, which in itself is a booking confirmation but contains two different elements or actions to be taken by the customer. “Gate in container” means the customer will transport a loaded container with their shipment into the container yard. “Before CY cut off” refers to the container yard cutoff that customers have to send the container  to the container yard within a given timeframe by Hapag-Lloyd. Another commonly used phrase is “Will gate in once SI submitted”, meaning that the customer will transport their loaded shipment once their Shipping Instruction (SI) has been submitted to relevant parties.

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Handled booking confirmations and cancellations with minimal supervision from Tarvin.

The workplace at Hapag-Lloyd employs a hybrid setting where every CS staff works from home twice a week and three days physical attendance in the office. As mentioned before, every employee is handed over their own working set of working laptops for mobility and convenience purposes.

During WFH, employees use their laptops to work. While in the office, it’s the same but the laptop would be plugged into a power port where multiple access could be gained like Wi-Fi and dual monitors. In the CS department, while a single monitor would suffice, dual monitors are the norm as CS staff refer to multiple things at once like for example communicating with other work groups, talking to customers and updating the FIS2 system at the same time.