Dubai Eye Radio 103.8 interviews Malaika Malik, UAS Grade 11 Automotive Intern
Malaika Malik, one of our fantastic Grade 11 students, was invited on the Motor Mania car radio show on DubaiEye Radio 103.8 to talk about her recent Customer Experience Internship at Al-Futtaim Automotive – and why she chose an internship in a car showroom. During Ramadan, 12 senior students from UAS completed their internships at Al-Futtaim Automotive – one of them was Malaika. The students from UAS completed their internships along with six students from Deira International School.
During the Motor Mania radio show, Malaika talked about the internship and how she learned the ropes on the floor at the Toyota showroom. Malaika truly impressed everyone in the showroom, including the customers and showroom managers. Her excellent customer service and communication skills were very clear from the start, but she also showed a positive can-do attitude and proved she applied all the problem-solving skills the IB framework has taught her during her studies at UAS. She used these skills to navigate in a whole new environment and without having any knowledge about car sales beforehand.
It is not often that a 16-year-old gains real sales experience and gets the chance to sell the latest Land Cruiser – in less than a couple of weeks. The customers were quite surprised when they learned Malaika’s age:
“They were really shocked at my age – that I was 16, helping them purchase a car!”
In the interview, Malaika reflected on her learning process and talked about how she learned about all the car specifications and selling points, as well as the car consumer’s buying process. She was also asked about her thoughts and predictions about car sales in the future – and of course, Malaika had an answer ready for that as well.
The reaction from Ray Addison, the journalist behind the Motor Mania radio show, summed up exactly how we all felt after hearing Malaika’s interview:
“I think there will be a lot of people listening in, who own their businesses, who will be thinking: “I need somebody like Malaika working in our company.”
Malaika floored everyone at DubaiEye Radio 103.8 so much that they now feature Malaika’s sound bites as part of their current promotional ads for the Motor Mania show.
“We simply couldn’t be any prouder of having students like Malika represent Universal American School and tell the story about the real-life learning experiences and benefits all our internships have to offer.”
The internships are offered every summer in collaboration with Al Futtaim Education Foundation and give our students a chance to get real work experience, solving real tasks. Both the Ramadan and the summer internships are an important part of our continuous focus on experiential learning at UAS.
You can listen to the whole interview here: