Job training overseas – Group aids students, imports skills

Amanda Allen doubts she could have landed a six-month internship in India without the help of AIESEC.

For several decades the international student-run organization has helped college students work abroad.

Jonathan J. Higuera
The Arizona Republic

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0210aiesec10.html

"It was amazing to see how corporations operate outside of the U.S.," said Allen, a junior sociology major at Arizona State University.

Allen helped train customer service representatives and spent time working at a Microsoft office in India.

Her experience was exactly what AIESEC hopes to foster: a global business experience and intercultural understanding.

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Facts about AIESEC

What: AIESEC, or the International Association of Students in Business and Economics, was founded in 1948 in Europe. Its mission is to help place university students in temporary jobs overseas that complement their studies.

Where: It has an 85-country network.

Who: Foreign students coming to the United States work on J-1 visas, which allow the trainee to work here for 2-18 months.

Information: http://www.aisecaz.org and http://www.us.aiesec.org

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AIESEC is a French acronym that translates roughly to International Association of Students in Business and Economics. It is a network of 50,000 members, mostly students.

"We’re training a global workforce so they can take that knowledge and go back to their countries and make their society a little better," said Sopan Shah, the group’s state president and an ASU senior in supply chain management.

The group often must overcome perceptions that it is outsourcing U.S. jobs.

"Don’t look at it as exporting a job, but importing knowledge, experience and skills," said Lawrence Beer, an international business studies professor at ASU and the local group’s adviser.

The Arizona branch operates from ASU’s main campus in Tempe. Students at other colleges also can use its services.

Last year, it placed eight students abroad.

It has hosted students from Asia, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.

Companies pay a $2,500 placement fee to AIESEC when it takes on a student intern. Those fees go to AIESEC’s national staff in Manhattan. U.S. students who are placed abroad pay a $450 fee.

"They are, in essence, running a global human resource outsource company on a real-time basis," Beer said.

Students placed in internships are expected to work in four areas: management; technical, such as computer science or engineering work; development; and training, often helping teach English.

Allen, who helped train Indian workers to deal with American callers, was paid a living wage of 12,000 rupees per month, or about $220. Her apartment there cost less than $100 a month.

"It’s a six-day workweek, eight hours a day," she said.