What the world needs now is people with entrepreneurial skills. If you are studying at a European University you can do this through the Leonardo scheme which will help you with travel and subsistence costs. But how about getting a foreign internship in a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) rather than a larger well known company where the entrepreneurial spirit may be submerged under procedures, hierarchies and well established rules for ‘how we do things around here’? In an SME you will likely have closer contact with original entrepreneur and have more of a chance to find out how an entrepreneur ticks. And right now if you sign up for an SME internship from an EU university you will have the opportunity to join a new online pilot course to help you get the most out of it free of charge.
Doing an internship abroad is a great idea to broaden your experience and make yourself more attractive as a future employee but the actual experience can be a little scary. You can feel rather overwhelmed with practical matters such as opening a bank account and polishing your language skills at the same time as you are trying to get to grips with the business model, finding out about marketing channels and so on. In an all too rare collaboration between SMEs and higher education, the UniKey Project is launching a pilot online course this October to ‘Unleash your Business Potential!’. The course is designed to guide you into exploring key aspects of your host SME so that you get the maximum benefit out of the experience. Being a student on the course will be a great excuse to be a little more ‘nosy’ than you might otherwise feel comfortable with.
The ten week course will not be a primer in cash flow forecasts and marketing strategies but will instead lead interns to explore issues which may crop up in their everyday duties during their time at the SME. Issues such as confidentiality, patents and privacy, business ethics, time management and knowledge transfer should allow you to find out more about your host organization. But the traffic is not just one way. The course will also encourage you to assess what research and products developed at your home university might be useful to your host organization. In the case of engineering students, for example, this could mean that the host organization learns of new processes to increase efficiency. This means that your value to the SME is increased beyond being just another (inexperienced?) employee.
So if this sounds like you and you are ready to start in October then complete the inquiry form at the UniKey project website or contact me directly.