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CEA CAPA Global Internships
Journey to Career Readiness
You will engage in a 3-stage journey to become a global, career ready graduate.
Discover
your career interests and goals while identifying your global internship placement.
Develop
the expertise you need to get a job. Participate in an international internship complemented by a career readiness course designed to strengthen your skills in the areas employers value most.
Demonstrate
the value you bring to your future employer. Leverage your personalized career readiness assessment with data and feedback you can use to optimize your career search.
Discover
The Discovery phase may actually be the most important part of your career readiness journey. During this phase, you will explore your career interests, which will amplify the alignment between your career goals and a meaningful and rewarding internship placement abroad.
During this phase you will:
- Engage in our signature Career Coaching program. You'll work with your CEA CAPA Internship Specialist to explore things like:
- The nuances of your career field so that you can discover all the possible job opportunities within the field.
- Your strengths as they relate to the skills required to thrive in your chosen field, and areas worth refining so that you are an even stronger job candidate.
- Play an active role in identifying an internship placement. As part of this process, you will:
- Research and understand your potential host organization.
- Strengthen your résumé and practice some interview techniques so you can demonstrate your strengths to your potential host organization.
- Interview with your host organization and secure your placement!
Apply
Pick your program, complete a CEA CAPA online application and submit your application fee. This takes about 10 minutes.
Submit Supporting MaterialsWe want to get to know you and your personal and professional aspirations so we’re sure to set you up for success. After you’ve submitted your online application, you’ll be asked to submit four documents for your full application to be considered complete by the closure date. Submitting these materials is a high priority for securing your internship placement.
- Résumé: A résumé is the foundation for any internship or job search. We want to learn more about your past experiences that can tell us how you can contribute to your host organization. We’ll work with you to refine your résumé as we identify the right placement opportunities for you so you can stand out and make a strong first impression.
- Statement of Interest: This statement should complement your résumé, and serve as a personalized letter to potential supervisors, introducing yourself, expressing your interests, and explaining why you'd be a good fit for the areas you’ve expressed interested in. You can also highlight your skills and experiences. Think of it as a way to make a strong first impression and show how enthusiastic you are about a potential opportunity.
- Transcript: We’ll need copies of your transcript(s), which might be official or unofficial based on your home institution’s and your CEA CAPA program’s requirements.
- Career Development Assessment Form: This is an online form that will ask you about your motivation to participate in the program, placement areas you’re interested in, your past experience and additional information our team needs to know to search for your internship placement. It takes about 15 minutes to complete.
Certified Career Coaching
All CEA CAPA Internship Specialists are NACE certified in best practices for career coaching. Your Internship Specialist is eager to work with you on exploring and identifying your personal career development pathway! They will guide you through each step of our internship placement process before your program starts to ensure our ability to identify a placement that aligns with your interests. They will also provide you with personalized online career coaching. By the end of this process, you will be able to:
- Compare and contrast the nuances of your chosen career field so you better understand opportunities available to you upon graduation.
- Update your résumé and statement of interest so it is tailored to your desired placement in your chosen location.
- Improve your ability to answer common interview questions so you stand out in the interview process with your host organization.
You will be introduced to the 8 career readiness competencies employers are seeking most in new hires and start to explore how you can leverage them for long term success in your career journey.
Our Internship Specialists are ready to guide you through a process that is designed to:
- Clarify and define your future career pathway.
- Secure an international internship that will encourage you to take advantage of the skills you have, while strengthening the skills you’ll need to be competitive in a global job market upon graduation.
- Differentiate yourself by identifying and aligning your competencies to those employers are seeking the most in job candidates nowadays.
During the placement process, you will also be introduced to your Internship Coordinator, based in your chosen location, who will work closely with you on identifying and securing an internship placement that aligns with the placement areas you’ve expressed interest in during the application stage. Here is an outline of what you can expect.
Timeline: The placement process can be as short as 4 weeks and as long as several months depending on the uniqueness of your internship interest and your engagement in the process.
Placement Guarantee: CEA CAPA guarantees to source Career & Internship Program participants an experiential learning placement that will allow them to develop the key transferable skills that US-based employers most want all graduating undergraduate students to have to be competitive in today's job market. CEA CAPA guarantees to source each participant an experiential learning placement as long as they meet all of the below criteria:
- Apply by the original application deadline.
- Meet the eligibility criteria for their CEA CAPA Program.
- Remain actively engaged throughout the placement process, including but not limited to, meeting all submission deadlines for each step of the process, meeting requests for additional documentation and attending all scheduled meetings and interviews.
Explore the details of our Experiential Learning Placements Policy here.
Develop
Onward! You've secured your placement and are launching your new global professional adventure. Welcome to the most exciting part of your career readiness transformation. During this phase, you get to try out your new future career while experimenting with all the facets of what it means to be career ready.
Over the course of the next several weeks or months of your program, you will:
- Be an active and engaged part of a small team at your host organization. This is your chance to observe and learn from your colleagues while making your own meaningful contribution to your host organization.
- Work anywhere between 20 hours per week (semester/summer programs) to 30 hours per week (summer programs) for your host organization.
- Participate in the 3 or 6 credit Global Internship Course that invites you to explore, define, and practice the 8 most important career competencies employers are seeking in new hires.
- Engage in additional cultural and social activities our in-country teams have designed for you.
- Take some additional courses (optional for summer programs) so you can stay on track for graduation.
With your internship placement secured and a keen motivation to start interning, it's time to do just that!
At the launch of your program, you'll attend an internship specific orientation, this session will focus on how to make the most of your internship experience, academic expectations, tips on navigating the workplace in your host culture, and you will get to meet your fellow interns. It could also include a practice commute to your host site.
This is an exciting time! And it can also feel awkward as you get to know your new host organization supervisor and co-workers. You'll establish your work plan, clarify expectations, and get to know your new commute and workplace. Our in-country team will be there to support you as you navigate these first few days. We're excited to be a part of your journey!
Our Global Internship Course is delivered by dynamic academic mentors and will provide you with the opportunity to process your internship experience both independently and with your CEA CAPA peers so you can make the most out of your program. During the course, you will:
- Explore the 8 NACE Competencies through 8 modules designed for each competency. You will learn to develop a common language through which to explore your internship in the moment, and later convey the outcomes of your experiences to employers.
- Elevate your thinking about your weekly internship experience to a higher level through homework and individual projects assigned in each module.
- Process the ideas that evolve from weekly course content and projects by engaging in live group discussions focused on the cultural or career development dimensions of your experience.
- Take part in a variety of learning activities such as masterclasses, career preparedness workshops, online field research, informal and formal presentations from industry experts, self-guided and guided research, and mock interviews.
You may be conducting your internship independently, but you are never alone. Our Internship Team in-country will always be available for mentorship and support. They will be curious about your experience and want to hear about your successes and challenges. They will be checking in with both you and your host organization supervisor regularly over the course of your internship to be sure you're working towards your goals and your host organization is tracking toward theirs through your contributions as well.
If you're completing a study + internship program, you'll be taking additional classes alongside your internship experience. You'll be balancing work and school, and will be regularly commuting between your classes, housing, and host site for your placement. There's no better way to have an authentic experience abroad than to live and work like a local in this way!
Demonstrate
Congratulations! You’ve just accomplished something less than 1% of university & college undergraduates can say they’ve done too. You’ve completed an international internship. Now it’s time to make the most of what you’ve cultivated and convert it into the start of a fulfilling career. The “Demonstrate” phase of your CEA CAPA Global Internship has been designed to:
- Provide you with an independent assessment of each of your career readiness skills so that you can demonstrate your value to future employers.
- Equip you with the information you need to continue your career search process with your career center at your home campus.
- Launch your transition from student to professional.
At the end of your internship, you will be asked to gather feedback from your supervisor(s) and co-worker(s) about your internship experience. You'll also be asked to evaluate yourself and your own performance. This data will be combined with data from 24,000+ student interns and 87,000+ job candidates to provide you with a personalized career readiness report. It will provide you with insights into how your career skills align to those of your peers and your job competition. You'll get feedback about your strengths so that you know what to highlight to future employers. And you'll learn more about what skills to strengthen so you get the job you want in the next step of your career journey.
As alumni of CEA CAPA Global Internship Programs, you'll always have access to resources and ongoing professional development opportunities. Join our LinkedIn group to network with other CEA CAPA alum. Participate in professional development workshops. Share your experiences and words of wisdom with future interns or study abroad students so they can also make the most of their programs abroad. Learn more about our alumni programming here.