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Internship Abroad: 4 Tips

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Photo: My departure from Lyon (France) to Barcelona for my internship marked the beginning of the best 5 months of my LIFE!

You’ve probably noticed it by now, I’m a strong advocate for traveling as often as you can during your studies and I encourage all students to take every opportunity to live in a foreign country for a couple of months.
If your University does not offer exchange programs with Universities abroad, completing your internship in a foreign country might be a great alternative.

Here are 5 pieces of advice to get you started:

  1. Useful links to find your internship.

In Germany:
https://www.praktikum.info
http://www.praktikum.de
http://www.meinpraktikum.de
http://www.praktika.de
http://www.prabo.de

Australia:
http://studentinternships.com.au
http://jobsearch.gov.au

USA:
http://www.internships.com
http://www.internabroadusa.com
https://www.looksharp.com
https://www.usajobs.gov

Spain:
https://www.studentjob.es
http://practicasdecomercio.com
http://www.dialogo.es/

Italy:
http://www.infojobs.it
http://www.jobonline.it

UK: 
http://www.internwise.co.uk
https://jobs.theguardian.com
http://www.milkround.com
http://www.reed.co.uk
https://www.studentjob.co.uk

Europe & the rest of the world:
http://globalplacement.com
http://www.stepstone.com
http://www.goabroad.com/intern-abroad

2. Internship providers and programs.

Some companies can help you find your internship abroad. However, this option can be extremely costly.
If this could be an option for you, check out these websites:

For Spain: www.adelanteabroad.com.
For Australia, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, England, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Spain, and Thailand, visit  www.worldinternships.org
If you’d like to go to New York City, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, Washington DC, Miami, San Francisco, Barcelona, Boston, Costa Rica, or Hong Kong, this website is for you: www.SummerInternships.com

3. When to start looking.


Finding an internship abroad may take more time than finding one in your home country. According to your destination, administrative formalities such visa obtention or internship agreement signature by the company take time and must be taken into consideration.
Therefore, I highly recommend to start looking for your internship 5 to 6 months prior to starting it.
Learn from my mistakes. 🙂
I wanted to complete my internship in California, but did not have enough time to get my visa done, so I had to stay in Europe instead and went to Barcelona.

4. How to finance your stay abroad if your internship is not paid.

You will be lucky if you find a paid internship. It’s not impossible, but from my experience, fewer internships are paid. So how can you support yourself while living abroad, you ask?
Some scholarships can help lessen the financial burden of living in a foreign country for a few months, and could even cover all your expenses.

There are grants that are specific to your country/region and others that you can obtain through your university’s internship program. You should look into them ASAP not to miss the application deadlines.
I wish I could get into more details about which scholarships exactly you could apply for, but they vary according to the countries. So my best advice would be to go to your University’s International Department. They have all the information regarding the scholarships you could get.

In European universities for instance, the Erasmus scholarship can amount up to 300 to 350€ monthly depending on your destination and the length of your stay. In France, you can add up the Erasmus University with governmental and regional grant.

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