This week’s blog is about internships! A field with which I’m very familiar with, as I am an intern at Career of the Day.
I guess the story I’m about to tell you appeals to most people in my situation.
Graduating was the best feeling ever. The world seems to be full of opportunities and chances. In my case it meant moving from The Netherlands to Australia. I got good grades, went to good universities, even have some work experience back home so finding a job would be easy….Right?!
Everybody knows the vicious circle of needing work experience to get work experience. Nobody wants to hire you because you don’t have work experience, but you need to get a job to get experienced. It is a tedious process and I looked for jobs for ages without any result.
Even with my degrees in my pocket and experience in my home country, it just didn’t seem to work and it was time to break that circle!
Australia is different in many ways than what I’m used to. Besides driving on the other side of the road, having winter when it’s summer and summer when it’s winter, they also mainly only hire people that have so-called ‘local experience’. This means relevant work experience gained in Australia. It doesn’t matter whether you come from the US, the UK, China or Peru, you have to have worked in Australia. Experience from back home is nice but it is not sufficient enough to get hired. So what do you do then?
You do an internship! Doing an internship is THE solution. You can do it during your study, or when you’re too busy studying you can do it after graduation. You could even do it during your summer holiday.
It can be busy to combine your studies with an internship, but you can integrate theory from class into practice directly. If you do an internship after graduation it means you’ll be fully available and the more hours you put into an internship the more you’ll learn from it. Doing it over summer means you can’t go on holiday, although it might provide you a job after summer which in turn gives you the money to go on an even bigger holiday the next summer!
I said farewell to European summer and was lucky enough to end up as an intern for Career of the Day, which in turn provides internships to people in my situation.
At Career of the Day we define an internship as follows: an internship is an unpaid work and learning experience. It usually runs for 6 to 12 weeks and can be part-time or full-time.
The reason the internship program is unpaid is because the main goal is for the intern to achieve their objectives in a structured hands-on training capacity in a professional company. The emphasis is on learning and building upon your employability, rather than employment itself.
As it is a part of the Professional Internship Program, Career of the Day will train you on interviewing and the unique business life here in Australia, as well as tailor your resume to match what employers are really looking for!
We make the whole thing really easy for you. You just need to follow the guidance and mentorship from Career of the Day, who arranges several interviews for you and is also in contact throughout the entire internship to make sure everything is going amazing.
For me, my internship has been a very valuable, fun, and unique experience. An internship is an easy way to meet people, start up your professional network, get a taste of the Australian business culture, learn a bunch of things you didn’t learn at school yet, give your resume a boost. Do I need to keep going?
The good thing for you and me is that Career of the Day also has a long list of companies wanting to hire people like you. If you do well during the internship the company might offer you a paid position. At least that’s what happens over 70% of the time. So doing an internship means you might meet your future employer!
Another great thing about being an intern is that you’re there to learn. They don’t expect you to be a pro already. You’ll get trained on the job, so no prior experience is necessary. You don’t have to be an Australian Permanent Resident, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a student or not, and you don’t even have to speak fluent English.
For foreigners doing an internship in Australia is a great opportunity to get a taste of Australia and its culture. I can’t imagine a better way to do an internship than in a country with beautiful beaches and great weather all year round. Add the modern and vibrant cities, the rainforests on the one site and the red desert in the outback on the other side, the unique wildlife combined with friendly locals and you get a world changing experience.
If you want more information about doing an internship and the whole process behind it, visit our internship page or just give us a call.