Interns Head Abroad for Work Experience

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Parents and students must be careful when deciding whether to pay the large fees associated with these programs and make certain that the investment will pay off for the student in the long run, Contomanolis says. "I've spoken many a time about the trend of parents paying $10,000 for their kids to get an unpaid internship in the entertainment industry. I think that is appalling and blatantly playing on the fears of students and parents," he says. "But with the working-abroad program, the fees often cover immigration documents, visa-related items, housing, so people understand what they are paying for and can then do an analysis."

With so much demand, a small but growing number of companies that specialize in study-abroad programs are trying to capitalize on this new market by starting work-abroad programs. One of the newer programs is Intrax Internships Abroad, a division of the San Francisco-based Intrax Cultural Exchange. Launched last year, the Intrax internship program sets students like Moughan up with jobs in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, and soon China. So far, interest has been high, and applications have more than quadrupled this year, says Terry Cumes, the internship program's managing director. "We saw that the same students studying abroad wanted to find internships overseas," Cumes said. "Now when you look for a job, you can't say I've studied abroad for a year because everyone has done something like that."

Distinguishing Factor

Indeed, differentiating oneself in today's job market has been a motivating factor for students signing up for these programs. When Sarah Block graduated from Syracuse University (Syracuse Undergraduate Business Profile) in 2008, she knew she wanted professional experience abroad. She'd heard about a program called Masa Israel, an Israeli work-abroad program for recent college graduates, and applied for a spot. A few months later, she was working in the marketing department at Tel Aviv-based Radvision (RVSN), which develops video network infrastructure. When she returned to the U.S. five months later, she landed a job at Godfrey Q & Partners, a San Francisco advertising agency. Block, 23, is convinced that her experience abroad helped her to get that job interview and others. "If I started the job search right out of school, I would have been just another standard university student," Block said. "When I came back, employers and recruiters would specifically ask me about my experience in Israel. I think it gave me an edge."

Block is part of a growing demographic for Masa Israel, which has had more than 10,000 inquiries from recent graduates in the past 19 months, says Avi Rubel, Masa Israel's North American director. The group has arranged hundreds of internships for students in public health, finance, and human rights. There are 1,486 people participating in the program this year, a 51% increase from 2009, Rubel says. They typically pay about $3,000 for five months abroad.

Other programs that help students find internships in specific countries are also reporting similar increases. The DAAD- German Academic Exchange Service, which awards fellowships to students who want to study or work in Germany, saw a 30% increase in applications for the organization's InternXchange program and a 20% increase for internships at the Bundestag, Germany's national parliament, a spokesman said. Sally Hudson, 21, a senior at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me., is heading to Germany this fall to work at the parliament. A government and German major from Maryland, Hudson decided to delay her job search until she returns from Berlin in November, freshly minted with international experience.

"There's a sense among a lot of my friends that the economy will be pulling out of its worst point in a year or two," Hudson says. "I'm just hoping that I can hold my head above water until then."

Damast is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.

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