Nearly all employers prefer to hire graduates who have some relevant work experience, and internships for business majors often give students a competitive edge over their peers when job hunting. Besides critical work experience, business students gain important insight into real world activities that occur in professional settings when they participate in internship programs. Armed with this information, the students can work to develop important skills that they lack or excitedly confirm career choices.
Related: What are the Different Types of Business Degrees?
Since academic programs in business can encompass many areas of expertise, students should choose internships that match their particular specializations or professional interests. Selecting an appropriate internship is particularly important because some companies are prone to make permanent job offers to students who demonstrate talent and potential as interns with them. Here are several types of internships that are available to business majors.
Event Planning for Business Administration and Management Majors
Event planning is a career category that is growing faster than the average rate for all jobs surveyed according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Careers in event planning require extensive organizational, communication, budgeting and time management skills. Besides these skills, employers want job candidates with at least three years of experience. Business students can start gaining relevant experience through internships with event planning agencies that focus on conferences, trade shows, weddings, product launches or networking functions. Event planning interns gain project management experience, and they learn how to optimize event budgets and promote special functions. Business students who are interested in the event planning sector can also volunteer to help with charity fundraising events to supplement their work experience as event planning interns.
Finance Internships
While many business majors’ internships will take place in local, domestic markets, business students who specialize in finance have internship opportunities that can take them around the world. New York City is arguably the world’s major center for financial markets, and there are plenty of internship slots for junior financial analysts and equities managers. However, there are also a number of international finance internship positions relating to global investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, client services, business development and commodities analysis. These jobs can be found in cosmopolitan cities such as Frankfurt, London, Milan and Paris. Rising Asian economies in Singapore and Shenzhen, China also present business students with unforgettable global finance work experiences. These internships are extremely hands on, and students are not likely to find themselves taking on busy work like screening phone calls, scanning documents and administrative filing. During these internships, business students mostly analyze the major financial markets and prepare financial models and valuations using the theoretical principles and methods that they have learned in their classes.
Marketing Management Internships
Careers in marketing management provide some of the most fast paced, lucrative jobs in the employment market today. With top spots paying more than six figures annually, the field is highly competitive. Internships with marketing and advertising consultant companies allow some talented business students to gain entrance into this sought after career field through their work with the consulting companies as well as their contacts with the companies’ high profile clients. These interns are likely to assist marketing professionals with generating customized advertising strategies and brand promotion activities.
Conclusion
Participating in internship programs can open many doors for business students and new graduates. In fact, these programs often provide some of the first professional networking opportunities that business students can use throughout their careers. Certain internships for business majors can also position them for employment with international and multinational business entities.
