With most internships, giving students very little value, education, or real world experience, MindStorm Strategic Consulting offers an innovative program for students to get hands-on experience in business strategy and marketing.
New York, Jan 6, 2014 – Of the workers who graduated from college in the past two years, 41 percent say they are underemployed and working in jobs that do not require their college degrees, according to a 2013 survey from Accenture. Even with their degrees, nearly 63 percent of recent graduates said they will need more training in order to get the job they want, the survey states.
Because of this, many college students are doing everything they can find internships where they are more hands on and learn new skills that will enable them to be more marketable after graduation.Unfortunately, most employers do not provide a true learning environment where students are being taught valuable lessons in business and adopting new skills. The fact is, interns are treated more as errand runners and coffee getters- not exactly the dream experience they were looking for.
MindStorm Strategic Consulting and CEO George Athan wanted to create an internship program that would be hands on, focused on learning, and reflect the reality of competition in the business world.MindStorm created “The Ultimate Internship”.
Students were grouped into two teams- chosen by themselves. Each person was to act as an employer and interviewed one another to see who they would want on their team. After the students chose the two teams, their next task was to choose the team leader. For some, it was an easy choice, others would have to sell themselves to the group- showcasing how the group would go further under their leadership. These two teams would now represent two companies! The students named their companies and they were ready to compete in business with the goal of who could market MindStorm better.
Over the next two months these teams worked directly with MindStorm’s management to develop strategies based on their individual strengths and skills. “The students not only had the real world experience of being a marketing consultant and a business consultant, but they also had ownership of the project, it was their baby”, says Athan who acted as an advisor to both companies. The final results were spectacular.
Both ‘companies’ created YouTube channels, Facebook pages, SlideShare and other social media outlets. They created business strategy blogs, white papers, Prezi’s, Power Point presentations and videos which would be used for content marketing and drip campaigns.
The five finalists were Stafford Enck, David Galarza, Anne Qiu, Shayne Bingham, and Yuliya Kim. We are proud to announce the winners of this year’s internship were David Galarza, Anne Qiu, and the team leader of ‘Synergy’ Stafford Enck. “We were very impressed with each and every one of these students”, says Athan. He goes on to say “I read an article on CNN about the top 7 internships and they were great Fortune 500 companies like Google, Microsoft, P&G. But here the students were taught top business strategies and models and had the opportunity to test their campaigns in real time. This is information in which companies pay big money to learn.”
About MindStorm Strategic Consulting
MindStorm Strategic Consulting is a fast growing New York City based consulting, coaching, and training firm catering to small and mid-size companies across the globe. MindStorm specializes in helping clients achieve growth by focusing on 4 Key Performance Areas: Strategy, Innovation, Marketing, and Sales.
Contact:
George Athan, CEO
MindStorm Strategic Consulting
212.739.0474