AIESEC: Business Traineeships Abroad

"I was a trainee in Caracas, beginning in the sales promotion division of Shell Oil. After a few weeks there, I was sent to various Shell branches throughout Venezuela to study sales techniques. The company paid my travel expenses, of course."

Such was the experience of one of a group of Harvard students returning this Fall from summer traineeships abroad. The students, who worked in Nigeria and Venezuela as well as in Western Europe, received their jobs through the local Harvard chapter of an international business exchange program, AIESEC (Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commercials).

Summer jobs gained through AIESEC are designed to provide practical experience in business for students who have had some theoretical training in economics or commerce. The nature of the jobs varies widely. Although some jobs are no more than clerical work in a foreign language, many provide an over-all glimpse of one company's entire operations.

Versatile

One Harvard junior received exactly this sort of over-all picture. Working for Europe's largest manufacturer of foundation garments he was taken from department to department studied the profitability of specific brassiere models and participated in a research survey of the European bra market.

Other AIESEC jobs provide practical experience in a student's specialty. One junior worked for the Swiss Bank Corporation in Zurich, where he spent the entire summer in the office of financial advice, counselling clients on the desirability of specific stock purchases. Similarly, an economics major did financial research for a small mutual funds firm in Lille, France. At the end of his traineeship he prepared a 40-page report on the prospects for investment in one of France's major steel companies.

AIESEC traineeships in Africa have the particular advantage of offering a general look at business in an entire country. For instance, one senior who worked for the United Africa Company made an on-the-spot survey of advertising media throughout Nigeria.

A students on an AIESEC traineeship receives a salary sufficient to cover his local living expenses but each trainee must pay for his own transportation to the foreign country.

The Harvard students going abroad this summer were able to choose their country of work from a list of 38 participating countries. Besides all of Western Europe, AIESEC operates in Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Japan, Korea and most of South America. The Secretary-General of the organization is presently negotiating to arrange traineeships in Poland. An international engineering program has already sent several students to Polish state 'firms'.

Europeans Dominate

The international secretariat of AIESEC is located in Geneva. Although the United States has played an important role in AIESEC since 1954, the program continues to be dominated by the countries of Western Europe, where it was founded in 1948.

At that time only France, Germany, Sweden and Great Britain were participants, but the program quickly expanded to the rest of Europe and finally to the United States in 1954.

Over 4,000 traineeships were exchanged between the 38 countries during the past year.

The exchange procedure is complicated. The basis of the exchange is a one-for-one trade between countries. The largest part of the trading is done at the annual AIESEC international congress which was held in Princeton this past March.

Over 250 delegates from the participating countries made trades in 703 different combinations bargaining over salaries, reception programs, and the quality of the trainees.

Three Way Swap

Often the trading can become confused. Last year for instance 85 Germans wanted to work in the United States while only 22 Americans wanted jobs in Germany. To solve the problem a "triangular trade" was made with Yugoslavia in which Americans went to Yugoslavia, Yugoslavs to Germany and Germans to America. In some instances five-way and six-way trades have been negotiated.

The United States national committee for AIESEC encountered several problems at the Princeton Congress. Because of the American educational system, most U.S. undergraduates who become trainees, are less well prepared than their European counterparts. Few have the proper language training, and many have yet to specialize in one particular field of economics or business. Several students consequently failed to satisfy the qualifications of European firms.

The major difficulty of AIESEC in the United States, however, is jobs for Europeans in American firms. While France and Germany arrange nearly 1500 jobs between them last year, the United States was able to set up only 275. American firms have traditionally been reluctant to hire foreign trainees for the summer. The firms hesitate because they do not know the capabilities of the students and fear their knowledge of English will be inadequate.

The attitude of European industry to an exchange program is more receptive. European firms have always been very free in doling out traineeships. If they can not lure their particular trainee into future work with the company, they assume they can hire someone who has been trained elsewhere.

In the United States, however, businessmen seek assurance that they can hire the trainee for later work. AIESEC's greatest success has been among American firms with international branches; these companies hope in most cases to hire the student for future work in overseas branches.

In strictly domestic firms, other approaches must be tried. Many jobs are arranged through personal contacts. In other cases, emphasis must be placed on the intangibles of cultural exchange, promoting good will and cultivating foreign business. To a profit-conscious American businessmen the intangible is usually a very weak argument.

U.S. Receptions Poor

Another failure of the American local committees has been in receiving foreign trainees. Almost all of the European national and local committees have extensive activities and programs planned for their visiting trainees. The German National Committee provides a week-long trip to Berlin at minimal cost. In France, trainees are given a 14-day seminar to prepare them for their jobs.

In the United States, on the other hand, relatively few reception activities are planned. Most of the reception work is done during the summer, when few undergraduates remain at their colleges.

Many of the problems of AIESECUS stem from financial difficulties. While the German National Committee is almost completely subsidized by the German government, the American committee receives very little help from either the government or foundations. The National Committee is unable to publish an annual report, and solicitors sorely miss a compilation of past traineeships offered in American firms.

The American committee has also been unable to duplicate the extensive variety of economic seminars which European countries hold toward the end of the summer. Created solely for AIESEC trainees, the seminars last for about ten days, and have featured such luminaries as Ludwig Erhard, the German Economics minister. They usually treat such problems as European economic integration and the problems of rapid industrialization.

Enthusiastic AIESEC organizations in both European and non-European countries have made AIESEC a very profitable experience for Harvard students in the past few years. It seems unfortunate that American industry's reluctance to accept foreign trainees has limited the number of Americans who may participate.