Let's Get Down To Business - The Internship Semester

Within the International Business Program, the 4th semester is your first test of what you have learned  at the ESB. My name is Ramona, I come from the South of Germany and I am currently doing my Internship in the Communication Department at Airbus Group in Toulouse, France. I started my internship directly after the exams in June. This internship has to be a minimum of 24 weeks long, or 26 weeks if you intend to do the Masters option.

I started looking for an internship already in January, which was much too early as companies usually have interns for 6 month and don’t start looking for a new intern more than 2 months beforehand. However, just keep your eyes open for deadlines of the different companies. I got my offer six weeks before I started and it was no problem to find an apartment etc.. So don’t be too anxious if the deadline approaches and you don’t have an offer yet. 

Thanks to the courses at the ESB I felt very well prepared for it, even though I am doing my internship in a department that is not really covered in classes. The first important subject is the first and second’s semester Business Technology, as companies Companies assume that you know all about Excel (a fellow student just got a “Excel for Dummies” book from his boss – so they assume that you know even more) and Word of course. The Management and Financial Accounting classes helped me to understand financial results, which I had to put on the homepage of my company. Thanks to the second semester’s Project Management course I learned how to handle “virtual teams” as half of my team is based in Munich and even though I am working with them every day, I haven’t met some of them in real life so far. Last but not least thanks to the courses in English and Spanish, I have no problems to communicate with my colleagues and to understand their languages. As it is a very international team, small talk occurs in their native languages. 

The Internship semester is of course not just all about work. I am having a great time here in France. I enjoy being in the South of France where it is still 25 degrees in the end of October and I take the opportunity to visit other cities in France and Spain for the weekends. In big companies like Airbus Group there will be other interns which gather for Intern activities just like lasertag or afterwork parties.
I am very happy that the ESB has the integrated internship semester as I am not missing one semester for it and it gives me a feeling about what I can do after my studies. I am proud to say that I took the right decision to study International Business at the ESB.