Principal Investigator: Mag. Julius Dem, MBA
Collaborators: IML 2011 students
Duration of the project: June 2012 – March 2013
Contact: research@lbs.ac.at
Objectives of the project
At LBS, Bachelor Students of the sixth, and final semester of their studies, have to gain practical experience by doing an Internship. Students are supposed to transfer the knowledge they have acquired throughout their studies to practical life and experience a job situation in all its fullness. Thus far, internship positions for the 6th semester students were to be found primarily by the students themselves, with LBS assisting by forwarding incoming internship offers by email to the respective cohorts. Over the years, the requirement for a structured and organized internship recruitment process has emerged, supporting both the students in finding internship positions and respective companies getting in contact with them. The goal of this project was to setup an online internship platform forLauderBusinessSchoolstudents until March 2013.
Research methods
Research for this project covered an analysis of the requirements, needs and demands of both students and companies by a small-N survey of former employers of students as well as a census of currently enrolled and former LBS students. The questionnaires were supposed to help determine to what extend the students were interested in such a platform and how willing they would be to use it and how they wanted to be assisted in finding an internship position, respectively. The information that was gained from the companies was whether they would be interested in cooperating with LBS by sending Internship positions to be published by the University and what the cooperation could look like. The questionnaires were distributed via email and during classes on campus. All the questionnaires were analyzed in SPSS, the outcomes from this analysis provided the project team with expectations and demands from both students and companies.
Outcome
Based on the primary research conducted by the project team, it was concluded that companies are in favor of a cooperation with Lauder Business School in terms of exchanging job offer information and accepting interns/trainees from LBS via email, nevertheless the company’s questionnaire analysis showed that they want to put in as little effort as possible – therefore the team recommended to keep the interaction with companies as convenient and rare as possible (but of course as often as necessary). The internship platform developed ensures a close communication process between students, LBS and companies, enabling students to find the most recent offers online as well as tips on writing CVs. Furthermore students can easily find companies where to apply to and companies get the possibility to attract well educated and trained interns accustomed to an intercultural and multilingual working environment. The platform can be expanded to also feature tenders for traineeships and career positions for graduates.
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