Internship in Human Resources

Depending on their internship requirements and the available internship positions in our partner companies, prospective interns may work in any of the following (or other) disciplines during their human resources internship with AIP:

• Employment and Placement: HR specialists who work in employment and placement simply recruit workers and place them in appropriate positions within an organization. Also known as recruiters, these specialists are usually involved with screening, interviewing, testing applicants, checking references, or extending job offers as the case may be.

• Training and Development: training and development specialists are tasked with conducting and supervising training and development programs for employees. They usually work hand in hand with employee supervisors and training managers to conduct orientation sessions, schedule on-the-job training for employees, and devise measures for improving performance.

• Compensation and Benefits: HR workers specializing in this discipline are involved with developing, implementing and administering an organization’s rewards and benefits policies, including salaries, bonuses, medical insurance packages, pensions, etc.
  
  
  
• Employee Welfare: also called employee assistance plan managers, employee welfare managers run programs aimed at enhancing employee safety and wellness, as well as improving work-life balance. They may also manage health and physical fitness plans, occupational safety and health practices, counseling services, and so on.
  

Depending on the roles you are assigned during your international human resource internship in Asia, there will be many useful lessons to learn, and many skills to pick up. For one, you will learn just how difficult people can be to manage; and, in the process, develop what it takes to interact with, and manage employees the right way.

One exciting role you may get to play as a HR intern, especially if you intern in a startup, is interviewing/screening job candidates. This can be a unique and very insightful experience because it will teach you how to study people and gauge their inclinations/interests, as well as strengths and weaknesses; how to assess a candidate’s qualifications and abilities in regard to the available job role, and so on, in order to make the right recruitment decision. You will gain useful insights into human psychology, develop your intuition and sense of judgment, learn about the ‘red flags’ or ‘green flags’ to look for with candidates, etc. Your observation and decision-making skills will also be significantly improved during this process.

In addition, an international HR internship will endow you with other soft and hard skills, such as diplomacy, ability to manage time and priorities effectively, confidence, analytical skills, critical thinking skills, communication and interpersonal skills, documentation and data management skills, writing skills, etc.

Firms are major producers of national GP in an economy. For a firm to keep running however, several functions have to be carried out by different departments in the firm. All the major departments in any company, such as finance, marketing, accounting, and logistics departments require competent and well-rounded individuals to effectively manage them. This is where human resource management comes into play.

Human resource management ensures that firms are not only staffed with people capable of delivering on the job, but also goes a step further to monitor the performance of these people and provide training and support where required. Without this vital function therefore, it is doubtful that any company can take off successfully, let alone become a major producer of national GDP. In other words, without human resource management, there will be much less productivity, and this, of course, will negatively impact any economy.

The improving global economy has, not surprisingly, resulted to more job opportunities in the field of human resource management. As new companies and organizations are created and existing ones continue to grow, the HR industry equally continues to grow in importance and relevance, because of the constant need for HR specialists who can oversee an organization’s talent management and productivity strategies in order to maximize profits.

Therefore specialty HR roles, just like with other necessary business functions, are constantly increasing in demand. As one may expect however, some specializations in HR experience higher demand than others.  Employment and placement (or recruitment) specialists, as well as learning and development specialists, for example, are usually in more demand.

Since every organization in the world has an HR department, and human resource management is regarded as one of the most important jobs in the world because a company’s success or failure is ultimately dependent on the quality of its employees, young professionals like you in the field can rest assured that lucrative employment will always be available.