155 Interns loving Summer Internship
29 Jul 2015
Getting paid while working a summer job is the ultimate dream for any university student and 23-year-old Deja-Nae Chin Black has been living this dream for the past four consecutive years, as a participant in the National Commercial Bank Jamaica (NCB) Limited Summer Internship Programme. Deja-Nae, a recent graduate from the University College of the Caribbean, is one of 155 summer interns who has been employed by the island’s largest commercial bank for the period June 9 to August 28, 2015. Assigned to the NCB Foundation for the first three years, and now a Marketing Execution Officer within NCB’s Group Marketing and Communications Unit, Deja-Nae is singing high praises for the Programme, which she describes as a “great learning platform”. “This experience will certainly prepare me for my career path, build my personal brand and mold me into the professional I aim to be. Being a part of the NCB family, I have an opportunity to use my theoretical and practical knowledge from my degree programme (Tourism & Hospitality Management) and previous job experience,” says an excited Deja-Nae. The NCB Summer Internship Programme begun in 1998 and was initially designed to provide students with an opportunity to consolidate and apply the knowledge acquired from their academic preparation into meaningful on-the job experience. In 2008, the Programme was restructured to place greater emphasis on the role the Company plays in the interns’ personal development and provide opportunities for them to develop skills through addressing real work situations. “We allow them to understand the relevance of academics in relation to what it takes to be successful in the workplace. It also provides students with focused and structured work experience through responsibility for meeting timelines, making decisions, and working in teams. Interns develop a foundation of general workplace skills and are able to acquire information and skills in their chosen career cluster,” explains Rickert Allen, Senior General Manager for Group Human Resources and Development at NCB. He indicates that from the Organization’s perspective, the Programme also provides the organization with an avenue to execute value-based projects which enhance business results and to assess potential talent and create relationships from which future employment opportunities may arise. Mr. Allen points out that the success of the programme is evaluated from the perspective of both the Intern and their supervisors. “The evaluation forms a critical input of the ongoing refinement of the Programme in order to achieve our corporate objectives,” he states. Tiffany Higgins, a third-year student at the University of the West Indies, is in her third year in the programme and is currently assigned to one of the Bank’s subsidiaries, NCB Capital Markets. She concurs with Mr. Allen: “My experience thus far has been a mind opening one. It allows for a window into the working world which only a few are able to harness and it has been providing me with vital information that will allow me to foster the right attributes for my future endeavours,” Tiffany says. “I can safely say that NCB is the type of organization that will forever and always put its clients’ first and treating them with the utmost respect; it’s an organization that I can trust,” she adds. To participate in the Programme, students must submit an application and the number of spaces is dependent on the number of participating Units within the NCB Group. Students must meet the minimum requirements of five CSEC passes to include Mathematics and English Language and meet the eligibility requirement. Undergraduate or graduate tertiary students in a relevant field of study are encouraged to apply, as well as those who are scholarship recipients, funded by the NCB Group. They must be 18 years or older.
