New Internship Program Places Kuwaiti Graduates at Multinational Companies

This year, a new internship program led by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) placed Kuwaiti graduates in internships at multinational companies. The focus was to teach students the ins and outs of multinational companies and expose them to new career paths.

Mohammed Abdullah, a program manager at the Scientific Culture Directorate at KFAS, said the program was a great success. “The initial feedback from visiting [the companies] when the interns were there was positive,” he said. Students were placed at Siemens and Emerson Electric, and both companies “evaluated [the interns] very highly.”

The program kicked off with an announcement and a call for applicants on social media. The call for applicants targeted top graduates from engineering programs who had finished their bachelor’s or master’s degrees within the last year.

Abdullah said his team received dozens of applications. They interviewed shortlisted candidates and selected the top ten to move into internship positions at Siemens and Emerson Electric. The companies were “very welcoming,” said Abdullah.

Learning about multinational companies like Siemens and Emerson Electric through the internship program is meant to help recent graduates explore new career paths. Abdullah said that most Kuwaiti students who graduate with engineering degrees choose to register with the Civil Service Commission to pursue a career in the public sector or turn to oil and gas companies. “This third avenue of private sector entities that are linked to multinationals is not very well known, so it was important to highlight it,” he said.

After being selected, the interns spent a month shadowing employees in various positions, including engineers, solutions architects, and finance managers, to get a range of experience. “The whole idea is for these graduates, who have not yet had the experience of working in an organization, to get a feel for what an organization looks like and how an organization functions — not just the engineering side of it,” said Abdullah.

Another critical aspect of the program was learning about technology. “Because we are dealing with engineering students, [another part of the internship program] is learning the technology these companies are working with and the innovation they provide,” said Abdullah.

The program concluded with a trip to a Siemens campus in Berlin, Germany, in September. Abdullah said that the feedback from interns has also been positive, and he hopes to continue the program next year. He also wants to expand the program to all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates and pursue partnerships with more multinational companies in Kuwait. “We’re trying to promote STEM,” he said, “ [and] show that exciting jobs are available.”

By Marianne Dhenin