Students share real-world business experience

Students shared what they had learned during a collective 3,000 hours of real-world business experience at a presentation on the Manawatu campus recently.

The 17 students had taken part in the internship programme, each spending over 180 hours working in the local business community.

Placements included marketing projects at the web design company Spinning Planet and Highden Manor Estate hotels, accounting at Vautier Pharmacy, dealer network analysis for farm machinery company CB Norwood and business planning at Toyota New Zealand. Each student gave a presentation to an audience of around 90 host and potential host companies and students. Interns were from a range of disciplines including marketing, agricommerce, accountancy, economics, mathematics and human resource management.

The Internship in Business will also be offered internally on the Wellington and Albany campuses from next year. Internship programme director Associate Professor Sarah Leberman, from the School of Management, says most of the students spent a day a week at their host business.

“The internship is valuable because the students get an opportunity to put theory into practice by taking what they learn in the classroom and linking it to the real world,” she says. “Businesses get a fresh perspective and often the ability to complete a project which otherwise would not take place. The public presentation is a required part of the course and it is daunting for them to stand up in a lecture theatre full of people. The feedback I have had from the host businesses is that the standard continues to rise.”

Bachelor of Business Studies student Sam White, who is majoring in accountancy, received the Toyota New Zealand Internship in Business Prize for 2011, which covered the fees for his eight papers this year. He was received the prize based because he had the highest grade point average of all the interns for 2011. Mr White is also a Dean’s List student based on his academic excellence. His internship was at Arohanui Hospice in Palmerston North where he tackled the monthly budget, forecasting ahead and worked with accounting software MYOB and XERO.

Mr White said he had improved his communication skills, had the opportunity to actually use accounting software in a real ‘Kiwi’ business and increased his self-confidence. He hoped he had given the hospice a more accurate budget and contributed to efficient use of employees’ time.