How to Make Student Internships Abroad Productive

Going abroad for International kindship is always an excellent opportunity to broaden horizons, acquire new skills, and make a great investment in future career prospects. In fact, NACE or the National Association of Colleges and Employers states that approximately 75% of hiring employers consider “relevant work experience” as the crucial factor while selecting new employees. Furthermore, the statistics also showed that about 60% of college seniors had a chance to participate in an internship. These college students enter the job market with prior basic working experience. 

As can be seen, being competitive in the current day’s job market, successful candidates should have at least an internship experience, which is quite easy to get while studying in college. On the other hand, not only international internships can be useful and appropriate for candidates. Here are some tips that can turn your internships into productive ones. 

• Be wise while making a choice.

With the help of internships, college students can receive first-hand practical skills and knowledge that are required for professional success in the chosen field. Therefore, it is necessary to take one’s time and make sure that a program responds to the following criteria:

• A program is connected to the required professional field

For example, it would not be useful to choose teaching English abroad while studying medicine. Try to analyze how the internship activities align with the skill-set that you need to develop for a successful career. 

• A program provides you with all necessary support both while preparing for the trip and being abroad

Finding a suitable program also means receiving the desired level of support during the stage of preparation, the duration program itself, and right after your internship. This aspect is especially important since we talk about traveling to another country. Doing internships abroad can be extremely tricky even if you are an experienced traveler or have some prior job-related knowledge. The thing is that doing internships and just traveling abroad for vacation are two completely different things. Remember that you will need to communicate with professionals in the environment driven by cultural norms and standards, let alone speaking the national language. Moreover, this bright new experience may be somewhat frightening and intimidating if it is the students’ first time abroad. 

Make sure that your program has company representatives in the country of destination. If the program cannot provide representatives in the host country, check the existing reviews on this company to be sure that you will get quick answers and solutions to all your queries and problems.

• A program should match your level of experience. 

An interns’ responsibilities are usually indicated in the description of the internship position. Nevertheless, clarify everything before accepting the program to avoid misunderstanding and ensure that the internship will provide you with a reasonable volume of work that matches your current professional level. 

• The program should match your requirements regarding its duration

Keep in mind that there are both short and long-term internship programs. If you’re not financially or morally ready for a long program or want only to give it a try, summer internships abroad would be a perfect option for you.

• Learn a Language

Even if the program is entirely in English, it would be wiser to acquire some basic level of the local language. As we know, English is still not very popular among citizens of such countries as Brazil, Mexico, Marocco, China, Russia, Colombia, Laos, and some other countries. Furthermore, the knowledge of a foreign language can undoubtedly be your trump card in further life. 

• Establish and maintain contacts 

Doing an internship abroad is always about meeting new people and making new contacts that may come in handy somewhere in the future. It is hard to predict where you are going to live and work in decades, so try to make enough professional contacts. In addition, new acquaintances may be good advisors in terms of professional literature, training, and other work-related aspects. To keep in touch with new acquaintances, you may use virtual networking and social media websites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Instagram. Likes and congratulations on important occasions or achievements will make your new social connections alive. 

• Consider remote internship programs

Of course, the pandemic reality affected the availability of students exchange and international internships. Nevertheless, online technology advancement allowed a number of companies to succeed in creating virtual international internships programs. These remote programs aim to connect students and just graduated professionals from all around the world with partner companies in such countries as China, Japan, South Korea, UK, India, and Vietnam. In these remote programs, it is up to a student to regulate the volume of work. Overall, interns work about 20-30 hours per week. In general, the duration of these programs is two or three months. Remote Internships give students great opportunities to gain international experience right from their home. Remote internships usually require a lot of paperwork to submit to get enrolled in the program. If you value your time, it is possible to use Pro-papers or other academic writing services. 

As can be seen, doing an international internship program can be a great chance to acquire all required skills, including essential soft skills and hard skills related to the chosen professional field. If you prepare everything in the right way, international internships can help you to gain necessary work experience, give a lot of breath-taking moments, and kickstart your professional development.