Internship at Errecom: an opportunity for young people and the company

An internship is an opportunity to demonstrate your value and your desire to learn, a step that is often necessary to enter the world of work. Probably, most of the recent graduates out there have already found out how difficult it is to turn knowledge and notions learnt at school into actual skills to use at work. All over the world, but especially in Italy, students often meet a real gap between the two experiences. What they found lacking, above all, is the experience in the field, the know-how that books do not teach, but employers demand. As an actual training path, the internship guarantees a constant rotation between study and work and aims to actively introduce young people to a profession.

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Since 2015 the European Youth Forum, supported by the European Commission, has established International Interns’ Day, with the aim of raising awareness about the importance of improving the accessibility and labour conditions of internships. Companies are required to be honest towards young people, to value and lead them in their journey of self-discovery. As far as concern Errecom, the commitment is real.

There are currently four interns employed by the company: two in the marketing office, one in the chemical laboratory and one in the print lab. Each one has his own story to tell, made up of different educational and cultural backgrounds, experiences, and expectations.

As stated by Darya, one of our marketing interns, “At Errecom, I speak Russian, my mother tongue, every day: I never thought that I’d find a job like this. To be honest, this company keeps surprising me: it’s incredible how inclusive this place is, everyone here has such a different background, and the most beautiful thing is that you get valued for it”. International Business, the course she is enrolled in at the University of Brescia, is helping her to gain some skills that she has found useful at work. Unlike many other Italian universities, in fact, not only the lectures are in English, but they are also very practical, supported by case studies, exercises and projects. Darya is not the only International Business student that Errecom is training in the marketing department. Glenda, a native German speaker whose parents expatriated from Italy to Germany, is currently living in Brescia to attend the double degree in International Business and got recently hired by Errecom as a marketing intern. “This internship will allow me to deepen my knowledge on social media marketing, a branch of marketing that both Italian and German universities do not consider much because they are more focused on offline strategies and tools”. Another important aspect that Glenda emphasises is the opportunity to improve her Italian and to get closer to our culture, which is fundamental for those who, like her, study International Business and have been lived abroad (USA, Mexico, Colombia) for years.

Andrea, a chemical technician at his first postgraduate internship in a chemical laboratory, confirms the commonplace that school does not prepare students enough for the workplace. He affirms that “high schools should increase the number of apprenticeship programs because it is by putting yourself out there in the world of work that you can become aware of your future profession. Three internships (one per year during the last three years) may be enough, but they should last longer than the usual 2/3 weeks, to give students the time they need to fully immerse themselves in the world of work, which is a completely different experience”.

Indeed, this is what Jacopo, the trainee who has recently been hired at Errecom’s Print Lab, is experiencing. Jacopo is attending his final year at an Information Technology school while having his first job experience in our Print Lab in the afternoon. “Learning, even though it’s something that doesn’t seem to match your path at that moment, might always be useful”, he states. Knowledge is power. All of us have heard this saying at least once in our life, but how many have really turned it into concrete life choices?

Four young people. Different ages, professions, cultures, and nationalities, but with the same awareness that will probably characterize future generations: the line between student and worker is becoming increasingly blurred. The two experiences must necessarily overlap to favour a learning path both theoretical and practical where books and academic classrooms combine with work experience, guaranteeing the training that talented and brilliant young people like ours deserve.