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IESE’s MBA Corporate Internship Program is mutually beneficial for both students and employers. The MBAs have a chance to get their foot in the door in the sector they are targeting after graduation. And the companies get access to additional resources, allowing them to carry out specific projects, as well as letting them “road test” future executives first hand.
“The internship helped me broaden my industry and functional knowledge and clarify my career thinking moving into the full-time career phase,” second-year student James Browne said. “During my internship at the international charge card marketing team at American Express I was lucky enough to experience a completely new sector and, in part, function.”
Browne spent 12 weeks at American Express last summer after completing the first year of his MBA program. “The most interesting part of the experience was seeing how marketing differed in the financial services sector versus my previous experience in the food industry. Also, as an intern I gained fantastic exposure to senior management, even up to the CEO of American Express Ken Chenault.”
The objective of the Corporate Internship Program is two-fold, according to Alex Herrera, Director of MBA Career Services. “It helps the students to transition into the sector where they want to work after graduation, as well as giving them an opportunity to try out the new skills and knowledge they have acquired during the first year.”
Enriching companies
Employers also benefit in the symbiotic relationship: they gain access to a pool of highly qualified future business leaders with more than four years of work experience and a thorough global vision of management. On top of that, the MBA students can call on IESE’s faculty and experts throughout the program for advice. “The internees typically carry out specific projects such as the analysis of a business unit, development of a market study or the roll-out of new organizational models,” Herrera said.
Furthermore, the summer internship program allows students and companies to establish contact with a view to keeping in touch in the future. IESE’s director of MBA Career Services has noted that companies are investing increasing amounts of time and money on its talent search, carrying out exhaustive selection processes in order to maximize their returns.
In order to attract the most motivated candidates, the host companies make sure that their internship projects are interesting and challenging to the students, as well as valuable to them. In addition, the employers allocate senior executives as the internees’ mentors, so they can monitor their performance closely and provide extensive feedback at the end of the three-month period.
And in assessing the Corporate Internship Program’s success, the figures speak for themselves. Of the 200 companies that offered IESE’s MBA students work placements in 2007, 90 percent went on to offer jobs to the students after graduation.
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