Many students have signed up for college internships abroad considering them a fun adventure and a great way to see the world, however will this time out also benefit their eventual career? So once you have joined up with an online agency which will have many opportunities on their books, get packing and get going!
The first and almost obvious benefit is that it can help you learn a foreign language really learn it, including all the jargon and slang especially relating to your interest or field of study. This can make you a valuable commodity, many people can learn language textbook style, but this is real life stuff.
It will show a future employer that you have resilience and a desire to work hard and will step out of your comfort zone in order to succeed and progress. The difficulties you will have to get through, sometimes on a daily basis, until you have mastered the language, will help you stay calm in a work crisis. It will enable you to remain level headed and thus be an effective problem solver.
It will also make you more adept at living away from home. If your job wants you to spend a few days away or work in a different office for a few months, this will not be a big deal to you as you have been further and for longer. This could land you some of the more executive roles in a company.
Starting at university can help increase your independence and resilience but you will often know people at university already and you won’t have the language or cultural barriers that you will if you travel abroad. If you are traveling solo, you will learn how to navigate tricky situations and even find places. If you are in a group, you will perfect the art of diplomacy; especially if you all get lost. These skills are required in almost every industry or job place, and jobs involve working well with others.
It has been shown through various studies that working through the details of a trip and planning an itinerary and transport connections is very similar to report researching and report writing. Then when you add to this the times that it doesn’t go right, and you have to think and act fast, this builds up your skills with dealing with work issues when everything hasn’t gone according to plan. This can mean that you could develop skills so that you are an asset to high pressured environments.
You might even stumble across a career that you would like to do whilst there. Perhaps you may decide that after all of the research of different flights, buses and rail transport that these are one of the fields that you may wish to seek employment. You might become immersed in parts of the country’s culture and that may connect to a job that you would like in a museum or art house. You may even just decide that you would like to stay and work there and opportunities for this may open up to you during your stay.
