Dube TradePort’s Internship Program is Launched
29 November 2013
Dube TradePort Corporation Gives Graduates a Break
Securing employment today is a real challenge, especially for graduates without work experience. Some 600 000 graduates in South Africa were reported to be unable to find employment in 2012.
This stinging statistic means that a great number of this country's well-qualified young people - South Africa's future - could not give effect to their investment in tertiary education, confirmation that there exists a gap between university and the workplace.
It is Dube TradePort Corporation's intention now to play a significant and pro-active role in assisting to bridge this gulf by offering select graduates a variety of internships and skills development opportunities to better integrate them into the work environment.
The organisation has introduced an ambitious internship programme specifically designed to provide graduates the opportunity to gain meaningful work experience to complement their studies.
The programme is directed at young people who have or are in the process of completing their studies. Graduate recruits are placed in a supportive environment, allowing for their continuous development.
Saxen van Coller, Dube TradePort Corporation's Chief Executive Officer, maintains: "A good internship programme provides the opportunity to gain hands-on work experience which you just can’t get in the classroom. This is especially useful to first-time job-seekers as they are usually passed-over as prospective job candidates in the marketplace."
She added: "Dube TradePort Corporation believes it has a responsibility to make a significant contribution in this regard. Our organisation is willing to train interns and give them the experience they require to secure employment and pursue their aspirations. Furthermore, gaining experience in the workplace is a great way to foster a graduate's confidence, giving him or her the opportunity to apply knowledge gained at tertiary institutions in the real world.”
Increasingly employers are showing more concern about a graduate's work experience, rather than the qualification obtained, and this is where internships come into their own. They create the best of both worlds - a qualification backed by practical on-the-job experience. Many employers today prefer, or even require, applicants who have completed internship programmes or who have gained relevant work experience.
In many of the more competitive job markets, the completion of an internship or any other form of in-service training is regarded as an essential mechanism for graduates to differentiate themselves from their peers, giving them an edge in the employment stakes.
Dube TradePort Corporation's interns will undergo a number of in-house learning interventions, all carefully designed to prepare them for the transition into the world of work and affording them the skills to become competent and credible employees.
The organisation's interns are based at Dube TradePort, La Mercy.
The current Internship Programme creates opportunities for trainees in a range of critical fields, inclusive of:
- Accounting;
- Contracts and Compliance;
- Supply Chain Management;
- Safety, Health, Environment, Risk and Quality (SHERQ);
- Human Resources;
- Marketing;
- Network and Data Centre Management;
- Maintenance;
- Horticulture;
- Agricultural Science/Engineering;
- Tissue Culture Laboratory;
- Water Quality;
- Development/Town Planning;
- Environmental Management;
- Quantity Surveying;
- Architecture; and
- Built Environment/Civil Engineering.
In order to qualify for the Dube TradePort Corporation Internship Programme, applicants must have
- Completed, or be in the process of completing under-graduate or post-graduate studies in 2013;
- No prior work experience in their field of study;
- A positive attitude and good communication skills, together with being results-driven, motivated and willing to learn; and
- Basic computer literacy.
Dube TradePort Corporation recruits interns from KwaZulu-Natal's various tertiary educational institutions and prospective applicants should source further information at their institution’s careers office.