Internships Abroad: A Fast Track to Full-Time Jobs

• In a global economy, employers need talent that is prepared to work across borders. Unfortunately, it is estimated that fewer than 5 percent of business school students participate in any kind of global program.
• While traditional study abroad offers students experiences that improve their employability, international internship programs, or IIPs, can lead to even faster job placement and higher salaries.
• Business schools should encourage more students to participate in IIPs so that they graduate with the cross-cultural skills and real-world exposure that employers value in an increasingly global and interconnected market.

 
In 2003, I graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the second semester of my junior year, I studied abroad in Madrid as part of a business program organized by The Wharton School. With that experience, I thought employers would line up to hire me. But I was wrong. In interviews with potential employers, none appeared interested in my study abroad experience, and I graduated from Penn without a single job offer.

Unemployed, I hopped on a flight to South America, backpacking around the continent for the next four months. Later, I settled in Buenos Aires, where I worked for eight months as an intern for a local newspaper and taught English to corporate executives at multinational corporations. At the time, I had no idea how this experience could benefit me, but I believed it would.

This time, I was right—my “investment” abroad paid off. After I returned, every potential employer asked about my experience working in Argentina. I later became a lawyer and developed a niche litigation practice at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, a law firm based in Chicago, where I represented Latin American companies. In 2013, I decided to pay it forward by launching Sage Corps, an international internship program that sends undergraduates abroad to work at startups.

Since then, more than 1,400 students have completed our program. From them, I have learned that my experience during my internship abroad was not unique. Research has shown that graduates with global work experience are more employable than their peers. Those who have completed global internships receive more entry-level job offers more quickly and earn higher starting salaries than their peers.

Accordingly, more business schools should emphasize formal international internship programs (IIPs) for their students. Although study abroad programs help students expand their horizons, IIPs do more to boost their employability after graduation. 

Study Abroad Has Advantages…

Of course, traditional study abroad offers many educational benefits. Researchers have shown a potential correlation between general study-abroad programs and improved student employability and graduate salaries.

For example, in a 2021 study, German researchers concluded that “existing evidence suggests that studying abroad often has a moderate positive impact on graduates’ wages.” Not surprisingly, different fields of study and types of jobs contributed to variations in salary. Similarly, in a 2011 QS Global survey of more than 10,000 recruiters across 111 countries, 60 percent of respondents said they valued international experience when hiring for open roles.

Of the hiring managers who responded to a 2021 survey conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, 44 percent said they were “much more likely” and 40 percent said they were “somewhat more likely” to hire candidates with prior “global learning experience that included exposure to diverse experiences and perspectives.” Additionally, 49 percent were “much more likely” and 41 percent were “somewhat more likely” to hire candidates with prior internship experience.

While résumés that list study abroad receive more interview requests, what matters is how well candidates explain to potential employers the ways their global experience will “translate to being a successful employee.”

The researchers behind a 2017 report for the Institute for International Education (IIE) analyzed surveys in which alumni of traditional study abroad programs outlined the skills they developed abroad, alongside surveys in which employers highlighted the skills they look for in candidates. It turned out that many of the skills that alumni self-reported matched the skills employers seek.

However, some critics argue that such studies have a selection bias because they focus only on the outcomes for alumni who have studied abroad, not on the outcomes for those who did not. A February 2020 working paper by two authors from the University of Arkansas tries to address this bias.

For the study, the researchers sent 902 fake résumés to hiring managers—some résumés listed study abroad experiences in Asia; some in Europe; and some, no study abroad at all. Based on the interview invite and callback data, the researchers concluded that some study-abroad experiences might be more valuable than others. Of the résumés featuring two-week experiences in Asia, 24 percent received interview requests, compared to only 19 percent of those without any study abroad experience. 

Interview Request Rates by Location and Duration

There was one unexpected result: Résumés that listed yearlong experiences in Europe received fewer requests compared to the no-study-abroad group. The authors speculate that employers’ heightened interest in Asian markets might partially explain this finding. However, their “hypotheses about the effects of duration were less certain,” they write. “Although one year abroad might signal the acquisition of valuable skills that employers desire, it may come with substantial opportunity costs.” In other words, candidates who spent one year studying abroad had less time for internships or other work experiences.

While résumés that list study abroad receive more interview requests, the researchers argue that study abroad alone does not make some candidates more attractive to employers than others. Rather, what matters is how well candidates explain to potential employers the skills they developed and the ways their global experience will “translate to being a successful employee.”

…But IIPs Support Better Career Outcomes

The pandemic has accelerated the job market’s move to remote work and “WFA” (work from anywhere) arrangements, as well as the development of cross-border teams. In a survey of more than 4,000 hiring managers across four continents, 71 percent reported that they had hired new team members who lived in different countries. That means that more business school graduates will find themselves working across countries and cultures, which suggests that internships can be a net multiplier for all undergraduates in terms of professional success.

Unfortunately, few entry-level employees participated in study abroad programs while in college. The Open Doors Report from the IIE shows that for the 2022–23 academic year, 56,000 undergraduate and graduate business students in the United States participated in study abroad programs.

Comparing this number to the latest undergraduate degree data from the National Center for Education Statistics, we can estimate that figure amounts to less than 5 percent of U.S. undergraduate business students. Of the 5 percent of students who completed study abroad programs, only a fraction participated in global internships.

This means that too many students miss out on a range of career advantages. Students across disciplines who complete internships before graduation are “twice as likely to secure a good job immediately after graduation,” according to Gallup data from 2017. More recently, the September 2024 Student Survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers included these two findings:

• Graduates without internship experience received 25 percent fewer job offers compared to students who completed paid internships.
• Graduates with prior internship experience reported first-year salaries that were 12,117 USD higher, on average, than graduates without prior internship experience.

Alumni who participated in another 2024 survey were asked about the outcomes of their global internship experiences. Of the 607 respondents, 85 percent “highlighted their experiences and skills in their CVs and professional profiles,” and 75 percent “confirmed that participating in internships abroad was helpful in acquiring their first full-time job.”

At Sage Corps, we came to similar conclusions after analyzing the entry-level job start dates listed by 879 of our own alumni on their LinkedIn profiles. Of this group, 87 percent started work within three months of graduation. By comparison, a 2024 Strada study found that only about half of the general population of college graduates “secure employment in a college-level job within a year of graduation, and the other half are underemployed—that is, working in jobs that do not require a degree or make meaningful use of college-level skills.”

Big Benefits to Business Schools

While IIPs offer distinct advantages to students, business schools also realize significant benefits. Indeed, when a school can demonstrate better professional outcomes for its graduates, it should see higher enrollments, and ultimately, more tuition revenue.

This value proposition provides business schools with an incentive to allocate more funding toward IIPs. That additional funding can be critically important to the many students who want to go abroad but cannot afford it.    

Additionally, IIPs attract more participants from underrepresented backgrounds compared to traditional study abroad programs. This reality supports many schools’ efforts to attract and serve more diverse student bodies.

According to the 2024 survey cited above, 48 percent of participants in IIPs identify as students of color, compared to 31 percent in traditional study abroad programs. Similarly, 49 percent of Sage Corps’ 2024 cohort consisted of students of color.

‘A Desirable Global Opportunity’

Many business schools that offer IIPs are seeing enrollments in these programs rise. Take the Global Internships program at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), through which students gain real-world career experience via customized, full-time summer internships abroad. 

During the experience, students interact remotely with a CU Boulder faculty member “to reflect intentionally on their internships and to discuss how the theory and skills they learn through their coursework at CU Boulder play out in the work world,” explains Steve Rose, the school’s associate director of education abroad. Participants also take a six-credit academic course to enhance their experiential learning and reinforce their professional skills. 

Since introducing the program in 2016, the school has had 457 students participate in the program (with a break during the pandemic). That number includes 206 students from the CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. “Interns develop essential soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, and teamwork,” says Rose. “The Global Internships program helps students boost their résumés and enhance their marketability to future employers.”

We can predict better employment outcomes for graduates who participate in international work experiences, and these outcomes can support a business school’s front-end admissions recruiting efforts.

In 2024, one CU Boulder student completed a marketing internship at Field of Vision, a sports inclusion startup in Dublin. The student noted that this experience “allowed me to contribute directly to a company whose mission aligns with my passion for accessibility in sports” and “has deepened my interest in pursuing a career in marketing, with a focus on outreach and event management.”

The Ohio State University in Columbus has seen similar interest from its students in global work experience opportunities. The university’s Fisher College of Business launched its Fisher Global Consulting (FGC) program in 2016. The FGC has become the fastest-growing global program at the college. In its first iteration, it enrolled seven students; by 2024, its enrollment had grown to 156 students. Since 2022, the FGC has become the largest global program in terms of annual student enrollment, with more students applying than the number of consulting projects available.

Each FGC program incorporates a global consulting project that typically lasts two to three weeks. These projects occur in May after the spring semester ends and before most summer internships begin. “Like actual consultants, students do not know where they are traveling, who the host company is, who their team members are, or what they will be working on until after being accepted into the program,” explains Jennifer Musser, the school’s global business program specialist.

“Undergraduate students have found that the convenient duration and timing, real-world consulting work experience, and exciting global locations make this a highly desirable global opportunity,” Musser says.

A Win for All Stakeholders

Not all IIPs must occur fully in person. Schools also can design international work experiences that can be completed remotely or in hybrid formats. Such flexibility, affordability, and accessibility can attract even greater and more scalable student participation.

Most importantly, we know that incoming students want to go abroad and complete internships before graduation: A 2023 undergraduate student survey shows that 80 percent of incoming freshmen hope to participate in an abroad experience, and another finds that 70 percent of undergraduates intend to complete internships before graduation. Programs that emphasize work abroad provide business schools with an efficient way to help students achieve both goals.

As the data cited above suggests, we can predict better employment outcomes for graduates who participate in international work experiences, and these outcomes can boost a business school’s tuition revenue and support its front-end admissions recruiting efforts. The incentives to offer IIPs align for all key stakeholders—students, schools, and companies in need of global talent.

In the end, these programs offer benefits that are both tangible and trackable. For business schools, offering IIPs is, simply put, just good business.