Internship for Students

Holistic Curriculum

Virtual Internships created a curriculum that allows all students to complete a complementing professional development course. The curriculum is meant to wrap around the student experience and begins during the application phase and concludes after the student completes their internship. The entire course is meant to take 8-12 hours depending on the student.

1. Introduction
   • Your Career Goals – Within this introductory course, students will identify the skills, strengths, and experiences relevant to their career and internship aspirations and how they correlate to the NACE Career Readiness Competencies, several Key Learning Objectives, and Powerful Professional Skills. These all comprise the tools, abilities, and expertise that employers are seeking in the current global workforce.
   • Career & Self Reflection – Students will take the time to complete a holistic self assessment that will be used later to review learning outcomes.
2. During the Matching Process
   • Resume/CV & Interview: Pre-Internships – Resume/CV guidance can be tricky when working in several different countries and with students at different levels of the professional experience. Nevertheless, functions of a good resume/CV are the same across the world including clean formatting and dynamic quantified content.
   • This section provides easy edits and tips to enhance the student’s resume.
   • Your Internship in the Big Picture – This course is essential in supporting the student as they begin their international internship experience and includes information about work scheduling and successfully beginning the internship experience. It also delves into everyday troubleshooting and case studies as well as a review of determining a workplace culture.
   • Effective Communication – This course prepares students to begin effectively communicating with their supervisors and host companies including key information about written and oral communication. To enhance the internship placement process all interns will be asked to complete a pre recorded introduction video.
   • Project & Time Management – This course is broken into three units including Project-based learning, Managing Meetings, and Project Management Introduction.
   • Throughout the course students will learn what information can be learned from projects during an internship and applied in the future, how to manage meetings and the benefits of attending meetings, as well as a brief overview of project management tools and certificates in the workplace.
3. Placement Made
   • Tools of the Internships – This course introduces the student to several collaborative tools such as Gmail, Slack, Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, and more. The students are only required to look into the tools that their host company has identified as used daily.
   • SMART Goal Setting – This course reviews SMART goals and how best to create and action them. Once the student understands the process they will create a smart goal plan of their own in preparation for their first day of work.
4. Start The Internship
   • Intercultural Fluency – This course is dynamically designed to be given at the start of the student’s internship, to help navigate work experience with a company in a new culture. The course reviews potential misunderstandings within the workplace, cultural variations in communication, and cross-cultural professionalism. It concludes with a review of cultural agility in the workplace as it relates to remote work. The course reviews potential daily misunderstandings as well as identity abroad. It concludes with a review of cultural agility in the workplace pulling knowledge from specific locations.
   • Tools of the Internships – This course introduces the student to several collaborative tools such as Gmail, Slack, Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, and more. The students are only required to look into the tools that their host company has identified as used daily.
   • SMART Goal Setting – This course reviews SMART goals and how best to create and action them. Once the student understands the process they will create a smart goal plan of their own in preparation for their first day of work.
   • Global Networking – This course walks students through an interactive activity where they are able to map and visualize their own global network. It then illustrates networking best practices giving students the tools to develop an elevator pitch and a LinkedIn profile as well as how to leverage their global network.
   • Internship Awareness – This course arrives midway during program and curriculum delivery and is a great way to check in with the students on their goals for career management. It will also look at sector specific knowledge honing in on transferrable skills and creating a comparison between the sector in their home country and program location.
   • Storytelling & Job Description: Turning Experience into Employment – This course is delivered during the program to allow students to begin thinking about the skills and experiences they are currently engaged in and how to apply them to future interviews.
   • This course will introduce students to the STAR method and how to strategically answer the prompt: “Tell me about yourself.” Finally it will provide students an exercise in understanding a job description and one’s capacity to deliver.
   • Resume/CV & Interview Next Level – This course will build off of course three, delivered prior to starting the internship, and will support the student in updating their resume/CV to reflect on their most recent experience and skills gained. The course also builds on the STAR method and gives the student further guided space to translate their stories into interview answers.
5. Post-Program
   • Career Management Next Level – This course is a guided overview of our entire curriculum with exercises to allow students to reflect on their learning outcomes and internship goals. It also gives information on how to build a career both internationally and domestically.