Tips and Tales From Around the Globe

An internship abroad is all about gaining the skills and experience needed to land your dream career. Through an international internship, you get to meet people from around the world, explore different cultures, learn new perspectives about life, and develop as a person.

For these six alumni, their internships impacted their lives in a major way — their host companies offered them a position! Keep reading to find out more about our alums’ stories and their advice on turning an internship into a job offer.

The holiday season is in full swing and everyone’s favorite day of family, football, food, and giving thanks is almost here.

We thought, “what part of their international experience would our alumni say they were most thankful for?” From experiencing a new culture, making lifelong friends, to gaining amazing professional experience, there’s so much to choose from. So, we asked them!

It warmed our hearts to receive a wide range of amazing answers from past interns from different career fields and from our different host cities. Read on for 13 testimonials from some of our thankful alum.

If you're in college or are about to graduate, getting an internship abroad is the best way to begin your journey towards finding your dream career. Internships provide you the professional development you need to enter into the work-force and give you the time to acquire valuable professional experience.

If there’s one common fear among millennial graduates, it’s finding a good job right out of college. It’s not an entirely unfounded fear as most of us millennials will either be underemployed, or search for employment upwards of six months before landing a job in their career field.

Setting yourself apart in an already tough market becomes even more difficult when your peers have similar degrees and GPAs. However, recent studies by the Erasmus Student Network and different universities found that going abroad is the one true way to stand out and get hired faster.

As an alum of Global Experiences, I know what it takes to transition an international internship into a full-time position. Before going to Stockholm, no matter how many openings I applied for I couldn't get an interview. After my journalism internship, I had interviews for writing jobs across different industries and across the country.

I was even told at more than just one interview that my international experience was the reason they decided to bring me in. Every hiring manager, HR head, and supervisor’s first question was about my time in Sweden. Here are a few of my tips and tricks about how to talk about your internship experience during the job hiring process.

In today’s competitive job market, a college degree will teach you a lot of things, though most likely not all the skills you need to succeed in the workplace. With almost half of all 25 to 29 year olds having a bachelor’s degree, a college education is becoming the new normal. But even with an education, there are still skills employers say nearly all recent graduates lack.

1. Writing Skills

2. Verbal Skills

3. Critical Thinking 

4. Real-world Experience 

Many of these soft skills can’t be taught inside a classroom and don’t come with a degree.

What is success? When we talk about “successful” people, we usually think about someone who has a bank account reaching into the billions, a prominent historical figure, or a world leader. But when those successful people are asked about their definition of success, most will say those achievements are not what make them feel accomplished. Here are some of the world’s most influential people and their success quotes.