Have any internship ideas?

December 4, 2005 7:37 AM

[Internship filter] Any ideas for a summer internship for a college student? Here are her stats: not a U.S. citizen, but can work in the U.S.; native speaker of Russian and Turkmen, fluent speaker of English and Turkish, moderate speaker of Spanish; business major; very personable; college sophomore. Paid internship would be best, but any place that could lead to a future job would be good.
posted by k8t to Education (8 answers total)

Most MNCs based in the US are very keen on growing their businesses into Russia and Turkey. A person with her language skills would be a plus, but she'd still need a strong business acumen.

Unfortunately, these very same MNCs usually only go after MBA interns these days. I pretty much can't get an undergrad intern where I work. So she may need to look for a smaller company that works for a multinational.

Is she attending school currently in the US? If so, she should be ruthless with her faculty, department and school's internship offices. If she's not going to school in the US, it would be harder. She may wish to try and get a gig with the multinational's office in her country and that could get her in the door. It may never lead to a job in the US though.
posted by birdherder at 7:47 AM on December 4, 2005

Response by poster: Yes, she attends school in the U.S.

Going back to her native country isn't really in the realm of possibilities right now, due to cost, mostly.
posted by k8t at 7:53 AM on December 4, 2005

Where's she located?
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 8:11 AM on December 4, 2005

Response by poster: Michigan, but could go elsewhere for the right internship.
posted by k8t at 8:18 AM on December 4, 2005

birdherder, Turkmen is spoken mainly in Turkmenistan, I think there are only a handful of speakers in Turkey (there should be quite a few in Iran though)
posted by allen.spaulding at 9:23 AM on December 4, 2005

Response by poster: She does speak Turkish as well.
posted by k8t at 9:47 AM on December 4, 2005

Best answer: In D.C. look into Middle East/ Russia/ Foreign Policy focused think-tanks. There are tons both large and small, and they definately look for interns with language skills. Scroll down to Organizations and Institutes on CFR's page

That's just for Middle East: others off the top of my head: CSIS, AEI, Heritage, Brookings, Cato, Midddle East Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, and on, oh economics think tanks would take her also.

She might want to check into particular ideologies of some places.

Oh! US government has bunches of internships and they pay really well. Go to USAJOBS.gov
posted by stratastar at 11:12 AM on December 4, 2005

oh man, my reading skills have gone way downhill. My bad.
posted by allen.spaulding at 11:38 AM on December 4, 2005