#singaporeinternshipprogram

Internships are where higher education meets employment; they allow students to gain experience working in an organization while studying at university. They can be paid or unpaid and allow you to work in an organization for a set period, which could be anything from one intensive week, to interning once a week for twelve months. In some courses, such as medicine, nursing and education, which require access to hospitals and schools, industry placements are standard and are organized by the university. Other courses, such as those in the arts, business, engineering, law, information technology and science fields, vary between institutions and may or may not include industry placements or internship subjects, placing the onus largely on the student. Even if your course does contain an internship component it doesn’t mean that you can’t take on another internship at other stages of the course; after all, the more experience you have, the better.

It is likely that your lecturers and tutors have already mentioned the importance of internships and industry experience. It is also likely that the thought of careers and taking on work experience might leave you feeling apprehensive, especially if you are still trying to get your head around university life and study. When you think of all the benefits that go with completing an internship, however, it really is worth it. To prove it, the Good Universities Guide has put together five reasons why you should put some serious thought into completing an internship.

1) You can make industry contacts

It has been said many times: ‘it’s not about what you know; it’s about who you know’. While it is vital to know how to perform the required tasks for a particular job, having a good set of industry contacts behind you can be just as vital in helping you find and secure a job after you graduate.

Internships are an excellent way to branch out from your university course into the industry in which you are studying and expand your list of contacts, from university-based lecturers and tutors to people who are currently working in the industry. Most internships will enable you to work closely and develop professional working relationships with a specific manager and team within the organization, as well as meet a range of people in other departments and outside the company.

If you play your cards right and are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time then you may find yourself being asked to stay on in a more permanent role, but even if you don’t, you will hopefully finish your internship with a great reference from your main mentor and a range of potential referees. These references and referees will be invaluable when you are looking for a full-time job, so always remember to ask. You should also try to remain on good terms with your internship contacts and touch base with them from time-to-time; they will be more likely to keep you in mind for other positions that crop up in the industry and hook you up with those hard-to-come-by opportunities.

2) They look good on your résumé

The graduate job market is incredibly competitive, so having a full résumé that includes actual industry experience is sure to be a valuable asset. It has the potential to make you stand out from the competition.

Employers can read a lot from a sheet of paper. Having a number of internship experiences will show that you are keen to gain employment in the industry and will also indicate to employers that you have the right skills and enough experience to take on a permanent paid position. Don’t just leave an internship until your final year of study; the more internship you complete, the fuller your résumé will become and the more attractive you will look to future employers.

3) You can convert your academic knowledge into industry skills

While many TV shows portray interns as minions who perform mindless errands like fetching coffee and sandwiches, internships involve so much more. You might actually be surprised with the amount of responsibility that you are entrusted with. Interns are often given specific individual tasks and responsibilities, as well as being designated roles within a team working on a project.

For many students university can be quite theoretical and an internship is their first opportunity to apply their knowledge to the real world. The experience will not only help you to develop the skills needed to work in your industry; working on real projects for a real organization will also give you the interpersonal skills that you need to work effectively with others — and confidence in your own abilities. You may find that longer internships allow you to work on projects from start to finish and give you a more in-depth experience of an organization. If you have the spare time then a month-long intensive internship or a part-time internship over six months or a year may be a better option.

4) The experience will narrow down your list of potential careers

Internships really are a win-win situation. They can help you decide if a particular career or area is or isn’t for you, and narrow down the (often long) list of careers that you are interested in to find one that you will be happy in. If you don’t enjoy your internship experience then, at the very least, it will have helped you to determine that a particular area isn’t for you. Don’t give up, you can always try another internship in a different organization, role or a completely different field and see if you like it any better. Every experience helps you to define and redirect your career path.

5) You can gain an unforgettable life experience

While the career you end up working in may be a bit more down-to-earth, internships allow you to explore all the possibilities and come away with an experience that you will never forget. While a full-time job may be hard to come across in certain areas and organizations, many companies are willing to take on an intern. An internship could allow you to take a look into professions and organizations that you’ve only ever dreamed of. You could find yourself interning at a sporting club and attending matches and events, chasing the biggest story of the year with a news crew, interning for a renowned fashion designer or coordinating a prestigious event such as fashion week. You may even opt to look beyond your local city, and complete an intensive internship over university holidays at an organization interstate or overseas.

Source- gooduniversitiesguide

You're a recent college graduate with a killer cover letter, a stellar grade point average and glowing recommendations.

But if one important item is missing from your résumé, good luck trying to get a position at The McTigue Financial Group in Chicago.

You need an internship.

This network office of Northwestern Mutual turns to its highly competitive internship program for new talent. Erika Milonas, director of campus recruitment, reviews more than 1,000 résumés in a given year and interviews 400-plus candidates to recruit 40 for McTigue's year-round internship program.

The good news for those fortunate enough to earn a spot: One in four become a full-time financial representative after graduation.

Internships and the economy

The hope of gaining an advantage for future employment has increased both the number and quality of internship applications.

"Internships have become key in today's economy," says Melissa Benca, director of career services at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.

"Graduating students with paid or unpaid internships on their résumé have a much better chance at landing a full-time position upon graduation. Students are doing internships as undergraduates, and it is now not unusual for recent grads to take an unpaid internship with hopes of turning it into a permanent position or at least making some contacts and building their résumé."

The state of the economy also is changing the nature of work given to interns. "In this economic downturn, employers are relying increasingly on interns to shore up areas where full-time hiring has been cut," Benca notes.

Thus, while you still may be making the coffee in the morning, don't be surprised if you're also given opportunities to contribute substantially at the meeting where that coffee is being served.

Benefits for you

Besides getting a foot in the door with a potential employer and looking good on a résumé, internships have other advantages:

• The opportunity to "test drive" a career (Would I be happier in marketing or advertising? Am I more comfortable working with patients or in a lab?)

• Chances to network

• Establishing relationships with mentors

• Possible college credit or certification

• An introduction to the field's culture and etiquette (Are clients addressed by their first name? Are jeans appropriate for Casual Friday?)

• Accumulating new skills

• Gaining a "real world" perspective on an occupation (How much overtime do employees really work? How much time is spent behind a desk versus in the field?)

What's in it for employers?

Most job applicants put their best foot forward on paper. Their cover letter and résumé usually have passed through many hands to make them as appealing and professional as possible, and nearly every job seeker picks references who will say positive things.

Employers do not create internships just to be nice to students and others interested in a certain career. While an interview or a company test can add to what an employer knows about a person, an internship helps an employer evaluate how an individual would fare in the actual workplace.

Like The McTigue Group, many companies develop an internship pool and hire from that group. As Benca notes, "Not only are they seeing potential employees with experience, it is experience within their company."

Companies that devote time and resources to finding, selecting and training interns are looking for a return on their investment. The benefit might be in the present (using the services of talented individuals without having to make a hiring commitment), or it might be in the future (the added ability to choose a person who will work out well as an employee).

And remember that internship opportunities are not limited to office settings. From being a bird-keeping intern at a zoo to a horticulture intern at a theme park, all sorts of opportunities exist for motivated individuals and interested companies to enter into a mutually beneficial relationship.

Source-edition.cnn

One of billionaire investor and venture capitalist Peter Thiele’s major ideas is that “competition is for losers.” For example, he talks about how even though Google probably creates less value for humankind than the major airlines; the Silicon Valley Company is able to capture significantly more of the revenue. Why? The airline industry has incredible amounts of competition and so each firm tries to one up the others, leading to a spiraling effect where margins are incredibly slim. On the other hand, a monopoly in online search, Google is consistently able to cash out huge profits.

Of course, in the article and in his book Zero to One, Peter Thiele is talking about building businesses and starting up. But the same concept applies to students and job seekers: competition really is for losers.

Let’s take the internship search for example. Especially during the spring semester, it seems like every single college student is on the lookout for internships.

After all, you want to be one of the “lucky few” chosen by a random recruiter to be part of a class of interns who works at Goldman or McKinsey or Google over the summer. And so you dress up in suits for on campus recruiting, you polish up your resume trying to impress someone you don’t even know, you write 10 cover letters trying to prove why you’re good enough to make Excel spreadsheets all day, you put your head down and relearn some accounting rules for the investment banking interviews or data structures for the coding interview, you try to summarize your life story in a single “tell me about yourself” question. You live in stress for a month while you wait for what seems to be your short term destiny, and then when you don’t get an offer, you question whether you’re just not good enough.

Or if you do get an offer, you’re just an “intern” at the very bottom of the food chain.

What exactly is the point? To do something that you really don’t want to do, just for the sake of saying you did it?

The real goal of an internship is to gain practical experience in a non-contrived, real-world work environment. Sure, the name brand might carry a lot of weight and connections at major firms help. But what’s the point of competing against thousands of people to get that experience? As Face book COO Sheryl Sandberg argues in her book Lean In, corporate America “is not a corporate ladder. It’s a jungle gym.”

Indeed, it seems like making it to the top (or even “getting in” as an intern) can be significantly easier via the non-traditional path.

Source- forbes.com/

Several weeks ago, I wrote about what to do if you hate your internship. As summer winds down and students roll off internships and head back to school, I thought it appropriate to offer some advice for those who are having a good internship experience. Why is that needed? Because it's just as important to zero in on what you like about your internship -- and what that might mean for the future -- as it is to determine what you dislike.

I encourage interns to think analytically about their internship experience because this helps them articulate to future employers what they did and learned during the internship. If all you can do is say you had an "amazing" internship last summer, without providing any specifics about what was so amazing and why, it does little besides indicate an uninformed passion.

A former student of mine once gushed about his cool summer internship at an event promotion company, while being surprisingly light on the details of what he did. It was abundantly clear that he enjoyed his time there, but I pushed him to think harder about the experience. "Free concert tickets," is a nice benefit of working in music promotion, not a reason for someone to hire you in the first place. I urged him to tell future employers about what he specifically learned about event promotion and management, including any special projects (developing relationships with local businesses to promote music events), and particular leadership responsibilities he demonstrated (coordinating a team of interns to do street publicity). In this way, he was able to showcase his accomplishments and interest much more impressively.

So, how do you think critically about your experience? Asking yourself the following three questions about why you liked it can be a good start.

Was it the culture?

Perhaps it was a fast-paced, dynamic environment or everything was new and exciting. Did you genuinely enjoy the internship, or were you mainly pleased to have a break from classes? Was it hands-on or theoretical work? Did they have a training program? After asking yourself those questions, conduct research to determine if those things are endemic to the industry.

One way to gain some perspective is to consider whether you enjoyed that 10-week experience enough to seek out additional opportunities. In my work with students, many times the answer is yes, but occasionally former interns are prompted to realize that they are enamored by the novelty of the experience, rather than interested in pursuing it further.

Was it the people?

Consider those you worked with during your internship and the impact they had on your experience. Perhaps you were paired with a mentor who was knowledgeable and helped guide your work. Maybe there was an intern "culture," and you were around other people your own age. It could be that you liked the internship in part because you enjoy supporting a specific product or promoting a particular cause in a team environment. Think about other people at the organization besides your fellow interns. How did they seem to you? Did they appear to enjoy their work or the field in general?

While it's generally a good thing to like the people you work with, it's important to consider the broader set of colleagues you're likely to have. Again, do some networking with people in the organization to determine if the attitudes and behaviors you experienced are present in the rest of the organization or elsewhere in the field. While not everyone you encounter is going to be a clone of your 20-year-old self, you should look at the professional behavior of people who have been in the field for some time to see if that might be a fit for you going forward.

Was it the work?

Perhaps you discovered an interest in working with a particular population such as at-risk youth, ESL learners, or geriatrics. Or, you developed an ability to write for a particular audience, e.g. sports fans, political junkies, and pop culture mavens. Maybe you gained a great deal of practical knowledge or experience in your academic field or area of interest by disseminating research information through social media, determining pricing and marketing techniques for organic produce, or documenting the maintenance protocols for alternative energy equipment use by a brewery. Whatever the case, it's important to identify the specific tasks (data collection, research, and writing, helping others, communication with internal or external clients) that you did (and what percentage of the work they entailed). This will help you identify better prospects for your interests and skills in the next internship or job you pursue.

Next Steps

After your internship, stay in touch with people from your workplace. So many students fail to take their supervisors up on offers of recommendations, contacts or advice after they finish their internship. These same students become increasingly reluctant to reach out the closer graduation looms. It doesn't take much to develop a LinkedIn profile to stay connected with colleagues -- and that's how you should think of them -- at a previous internship.

And, if your former colleagues are not on LinkedIn, it's still possible to send an email once a semester mentioning what you're studying currently and asking to touch base about future opportunities in the industry as you approach the end of your college career. Both of these actions help you grow your network, indicate your communication skills and demonstrate your ongoing interest in the profession. Don't let a great internship be an isolated experience -- use it as a springboard to building your career.

Source- huffingtonpost.com

We are a new generation of talent. With accessible knowledge at our fingertips and enhanced quality of life, we have never felt more empowered. Quick-witted and confident, we have higher expectations when it comes to landing a dream job. In a job market full of talented individuals left, right and center, it boils down to ‘what value I can bring to the table’ to set ourselves apart from equally skilful competitors. For young talents about to enter the job market, industrial training or internship represent an opportunity to getting a foot in the door with a potential employer. As is often the case with everything in life, we tend to see things in clarity in hindsight. What follows are some learning’s I would like to share with those of you about to dive head first into the labor market — on why you should value and take your internship seriously (more than just to meet the graduation requirement) and make the effort to get a clearer sight on having your career path mapped out. While the industry you will soon embark on may differ from mine, the principles are essentially the same. The media industry is often regarded as a glamorous career path. While it may be true to a certain extent, none of those who have made a name, got to where they are today without sweat and tears. A high achiever is not guaranteed to have more successes without being adaptive and having a growth mindset. I landed my first two-month internship at Astro in late-2009. I was attached to the magazine desk and was tasked to assist five TV Producers with their respective shows. The hands-on experience was invaluable to me. It wasn’t long before I started seeing my name in the End Credits of talk shows and magazine programme that I have played a part in the production. The rapid pace in the newsroom had me on my toes. I did not quite have a good grasp of what to expect from one week to the next. There were moments when I was overwhelmed and days that I dreaded. Nearing the end of my second industrial training at Astro, I was offered a full-time position. Based on my work performance as an intern assistant producer, I had proven myself worthy as a new recruit. To be frank, at the point when the offer was made, I was not entirely sure if working in the TV and news media industry was my thing. I majored in media studies and marketing communications, it is through field experience that I picked up on the required knowledge about TV production. Eventually I took the offer and within the first month on the job I was well on my way to kick start the longest-running English technology show in the market. I have since moved on to take up many more roles within the company, gaining new experiences and learning’s as I go. In retrospect, what worked for me was that I held on to the following principles: 1.     Take initiative and be ready to roll up your sleeves to assist in any way you can. 2.     Stay focused and take one step at a time. Shortcuts are tempting as they seem to save us a lot of time. However, habitually be on the lookout for shortcuts make us lazy learners. 3.     Be responsible and take responsibility when things go wrong. Inevitably, mistakes occur. What I learned is to own up to our mistakes and shift the focus on solving the problem in order to move things ahead.

4.     Say “Yes” to new challenges and always be ready to seek for and take advice from the experienced. There is always room for improvement. Having a growth mindset is crucial for long-term success. Take a second and ask yourself, when will you ever have the opportunity to work alongside industry veterans to learn and develop your skills? 5.     Treat the internship like a real job and work as a team player. Take the job seriously if you want to be taken seriously by your manager. 6.     Actively seek for updates relevant to your industry. Read up or listen to materials that are outside of comfort zone. In my case, I started to read up on technology, business and economy.  You will never know when the knowledge will come in handy somewhere down the road. With each passing day, it becomes more and more imperative to know how to set apart your value proposition to prospective employers. How else are you going to be noticed from the rest of the crowd in this ever-changing global workplace?

Source-english.astroawani

Internship vs. Degree?

Who’s more likely to land an interview - a candidate with a business degree or someone who hasn’t finished their degree, but had an internship several years ago?

According to a new study by the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, the former intern has a 14% higher chance of landing an interview over someone with a business degree without any experience. 

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the researchers sent out over 9,000 fake resumes for business-related positions. A quarter of the faux resumes listed internship experience as far back as five years prior. The researchers found that the “candidates” with internship experience were 14% more likely to receive an interview compared to candidates without any experience. 

Why are Internships so Valuable? 

Any kind of experience is going to put you at the top of the list of candidates when it comes to hiring. Business experience isn’t something that can be taught in school. It’s something you learn by working in a business environment. The way to dress, the way to socialize and communicate, the way you present yourself to others, juggling priorities, and so on. These are all things that are critical to working in an office setting. 

Anyone with these types of business skills and know-how will have a leg up on someone coming right out of school. Employers have to try to find a candidate that will fit culturally with their organization. Is the candidate smart, able to figure out issues independently, able to work with a team and manage priorities? If you already have experience with some of these items you’ll be more valuable to the business – and thus more likely to be interviewed (or hired). 

It’s all About Ramp-Up!

The business is trying to find the best cultural fit and the candidate with the best set of experience. The business understands it will take some amount of time for a new hire to “ramp up” to full speed. The candidate they think will ramp up the quickest will be on the shortlist for hiring. 

In a business, time is money. If you can hire someone and have them at full productivity within two weeks versus someone who won’t be up to speed for two months, who will be hired?  Your internship will help you with the ramp-up speed! 

Ideal Scenarios

What’s the ideal scenario for increasing your chances of finding a position out of school? Every summer you aren’t in school, you should be trying to find an internship related to your major field. Not only will this let you learn some of the soft skills necessary to succeed in a business setting, it will also let you get a view of how different companies operate. Maybe you’ll find you excel in a small company setting or maybe you’ll decide you want to work for a Fortune 500 company. 

If you don’t have any luck finding an internship, you may consider getting any paying job. However, before you jump into the first job that offers you a position, think about what your long term goals are.

If you plan to work in a business setting, your job as barista isn’t going to look at good to potential employers as some kind of experience in a business setting. If the intern route doesn’t work out and you plan on working in business, consider looking at a temp agency. Although these positions are usually grunt work and can be short term assignments, you are going to gain valuable experience. If you can show a potential employer that you’ve had experience working in a related position to your major, it won’t matter much if it was through a temp agency or internship. 

Due to the limited number of internships available it may be hard to find or get into an internship. Keep trying and don’t give up hope! 

Source- students.collegefactual