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By Joanna Barrack, July 25, 2018
Internships are an impressive way of ensuring your resume stands out from the crowd. They provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your hard work, advance your transferable skills and develop your professionalism. However, conducting an internship in an international environment has the ability to provide you with even greater advantages - both personally and professionally! Highlighted below are four benefits that you can gain from an international internship.
1. Strengthen your Marketability
There is no doubt that the job market is becoming increasingly competitive. With a growing number of requirements and skills necessary for any given role, it is becoming as challenging as ever to secure your dream job. Internships are quickly becoming a necessary prerequisite to gaining employment rather than simply a method of enhancing your resume.
Interning abroad gives you a unique addition to a domestic internship. Combining an internship with some time abroad significantly strengthens your marketability and improves your career prospects in a number of ways.
It demonstrates the ability of an individual to communicate effectively in an international environment, which is an increasingly sought after skill given the global nature of today's society. It also equips interns with a unique set of skills which are honed and improved as their working knowledge of business is applied and adapted to different workplaces. This is a highly sought after combination of skills, displaying adaptability and a greater awareness of the international market.
2. Develop your Intercultural Skill Set
Internships, regardless of their location, are extremely beneficial in providing knowledge and professional skills related to the industry you are passionate about. However, completing an internship in a country other than your own, allows you to develop in areas that a home-based internship may not.
Intercultural skills such as understanding and adapting to cultural differences - both in business and everyday life, proficiency in another language and the ability to adapt to foreign environments are just a few! Being exposed to various approaches to work and professional communication will provide you with a unique set of transferrable skills which are valued highly by employers, giving you the upper hand when it comes to job applications.
3. Cultivating a Larger Networking Pool
Relationships are an important aspect in the development of your professional career. Your business network can determine your success when it comes to sourcing new job opportunities, or connecting with other influential colleagues as you climb your professional ladder. Undertaking internships in various countries while meeting a diverse amount of individuals not only enriches your experience abroad, but allows you to form international relationship which you can utilize in the years to come.
In addition, networking also provides you with the ability to learn from experienced individuals and may even allow you to see your home country through a different lens, allowing you to work more effectively.
4. Bolstering your Independence and Confidence
There is no better way to boost your confidence and independence than to immerse yourself in challenging experiences. Exposing yourself to foreign environments or stressful situations while interning abroad will allow you to improve your problem solving abilities, and increase your confidence when managing difficult tasks.
It may take you a few days to figure out the complexity of the New York City subway system, or how to understand and acclimatize to cultural differences when communicating in the office, but by going abroad you are taking control of your own learning experiences which will improve your independence and help your confidence flourish.
Internships, irrespective of their location, are an important part of your professional development. Yet, given the increasingly competitive market, completing your internship in an international environment not only improves your marketability, but provides you with a larger and more diverse professional network alongside significant personal development which a home-based internship would not provide.
Get out there and discover the world beyond domestic internships!
Find out how City Internships can connect you with international internship opportunites at our website: www.city-internships.com