 As you said, my name is Jen, I'm a HR practitioner and basically I've worked in many places as a HR person and I'm currently at my own farm, it's called Career Management Center. Basically supporting organizations with their HR needs from getting their workforce to separation, just the whole range of HR functions. We also provide career coaching for people who are looking for jobs, who are looking for another market and just how to navigate and ensure you succeed in your career as you proceed. Okay, and with your experience, at what point should one go for internship? Is there a limit one can just go for internship before campus or after campus or at what point? For me it depends with why you're doing the internship and the why is why people do internships because they have to build their experience. It's to give you an edge over the position that you're competing with as you go now, you can go to school and they're looking for a job. So you're able to go for internship even from your first year at the same day with volunteer opportunities even before you start college. Don't just waste time, if you have a chance to go and do something with your time, please do. For internships sometimes we have because I do not require you to go for internship but make it your business as a student. To actually go under that particular experience because we realize again it's very different what you study in class and what you do on the ground. Those two are very different. So an internship gives you the chance to actually test the world, you know, like test drive your career. So at any one time please go, you learn even even during internship. From your first year, second year, learn just purpose to spend your holidays doing something. You can get internship purpose to do that. And you know with our education system what you learn when you go to the job market, most of the time there are totally different things you actually learn when you're doing your internship. Apart from the experience you gain during internship, what are the other importance of internship? The imperative of internship is to have some to your career and some to the individual. And one of them is, like I said earlier, just test drive your career. I have seen people who actually go for internships and from the internship they change their mind. I don't want to pursue this career. I feel it's boring. I feel it's obesity. So it gives you a chance that you know you need to invest in that or now start looking at the options that you can pursue because most careers will have different options that you can actually pursue in that term. But until you try you may not know that actually you feeling spend the rest of your life doing obesity. You know we will go off change career of the margin. So first of all it gives you that. True, it also gives you a chance to practice what you learn in school now there at the workplace. The other importance is what you have just said. We don't learn much at school because the theories behind the things that happen at the workplace and I keep saying what is easier than actually the theory we do in school. So it also gives you things like letting people, how to relate with people, how to be professional at work, those are things we learn during the internship. How to socialize, how to just do things beyond school work. And then you realize that during internship we learn some very, very, very specific things. Can you use this one? Meanwhile, yes. So you realize that some skills are not learned in school like some of the soft skills. Like just problem solving, taking initiative. Even doing many, you hear that when you are working, take minutes for us today. It's cool, nobody ever told you something like that. Yes, especially if you have done engineering, you don't know how to write. No just engineering, very many courses that people don't give that particular kind of exposure. So it is your turn to actually be there learning a lot, a lot, a lot more than you learn in school. I do know with the education system especially if you are pursuing particular course. They tell you after third year you have to go for this attachment or internship depending on how the school calls it. Do you think the millennials take it seriously or the youths take the internship seriously with the experience with them at the job market? Well I don't think it's about the millennials. Even before the millennials, people will not take things seriously. So it depends with you as a person how serious are you with your career. So it's not a millennial thing because we have very serious millennials. So if you go for an internship and all you want is half credit and a letter to take to the school, then too bad for you. Because one thing that I would like us to realize is the millennials or youth as you say, is that actually very many people get jobs from an internship. So you go for internships and you can even find that maybe 40% of the workforce were once interns in this particular place or you're mostly recommended you to go and work for a different organization. So it would be very unfortunate for any intern to actually come to the place just for the purpose of. I am required to do this internship. Please let me intern here. Some of them then request us to give them letters to confirm the interning with us or whatever else when they do not intern. Meaning people have not actually realized the meaning of internship. But when you go for interviews now after school, someone who has interned, someone who truly interned and someone who actually focused together maximum from the internship will stand out in the interview. We will ask you some very basic thing because as we said experience is far much better than academics. And also of course the other things that you learn like Nautimoa, Kandibi, and we will be asking those kind of questions. Someone who has interned will be able to stand out. So it would be very unfortunate for anyone to actually go for internship for the purpose of this call. Very very unfortunate. And how much seriousness should the internship program be taken by the employer? I think I keep saying this sometimes we take interns and as managers we don't give the time to the interns. Or you keep giving them very many jobs. Photocopy for me these, file for me these, get for me these file which is very bad. So I keep saying when the time you have an intern, if you already have a manager with a person managing this particular intern, you have a duty to make sure that they actually learn something during your interaction with this particular person. So even as an intern as a manager but if your manager is not asking for this, ask for it as the intern. Can we just have a discussion? I would like to know that I would like you to know the things that I really want to learn during this internship. So how specific goals and have your manager understand that you don't mind doing the menu job, but you also like to learn the following. I would want that before I know how to program, I know how to do a BCD, I know how to do a BCD. Just have some specific goals as an intern. And even as a manager please purpose to make people learn under you. Because again, like in other nationship you are forming a footprint with this particular person. Five years down the line they will be like I was an intern at KPC, I was an intern at Y254, it is where I learned how to adjust this and that and that and that or I learned nothing. Well someone out there maybe he has finished campus and he wants to go for an internship. Or what makes, he is wondering how to write a CV, what makes a nature approve one CV or disapprove the other? When you are starting then maybe there will be no much of that. But when you have an internship and you are writing your CV, most people will pick you because of your experience. So it is very key that you go and learn specific skills when you go for that internship. Then you will have a CV that actually makes you stand out. Don't waste time writing things that do not matter like your age, your sex, your nationality, your burrito status, the kind of things that you see. And then a list of, a whole list of skills that are not required for that particular job that you are claiming to have and you know most likely you are coming to learn that. So that's okay. And then the importance of internship that is very key that I see. You realize that every time we are looking for people to employ, fresh graduates will give lecturers as their references. Why? Because when they went for internship, they never made any networks. And when they made these networks after they went back to school, they never kept in touch. So you don't have someone who can actually comment about your work ethics, about your initiative, about your character from a work perspective. So you are depending on a lecturer who can't remember you because even in class we didn't participate as much. He just knows maybe you came to this particular school and he still has to confirm from the records. You know what I mean? So it's very, very, very important that when you go for those internship you also form references, networks, social capital. Because you could get jobs there or they could refer to ourselves. Or we could even make them use them as our reference. It was spoken about networks, making networks while doing your internship. What are the chances of you being discriminated? Even after doing that internship program is over. Being discriminated, what exactly do you mean? For instance, you've gone for this internship, you've done the three months program because most of the internship are three months. Once the three months are over, you actually had hopes of being retained. But instead of being someone fresh from campus. It would depend on the internship policy. Like there's a place I used to work and now internship policy was not to give people jobs but to keep training for the market. Because people are looking for that opportunity. People are looking for a chance to be given an internship. So our policy was to make sure that we actually give as many students as possible a chance to train with us. In the minimum was three, maximum was one year. At some point you have to be available for a year for us to engage you. And the purpose was very clear from the one that this will not lead to a job. The purpose of this internship is not for us to recruit but for us to be able to pass this knowledge, the skills and the bcd and contribute as part of our corporate social responsibility in training the next workforce. So depending with the policy. And even as you go in just know as much as you're trying to to also give your job a better chance to be employed and get a job there, it doesn't have to work that way. Because again it's not always that you'll have vacancies and you cannot be employed even if you don't have a vacancy. Yes. And do you think internship will be paid? It depends again with the why of the internship. When you go for internship, if they are able to pay you because you're also working anyway, that should be good. But even if they are not paying you as an intern what are you looking for at that particular moment? What are you looking for? Basically you're looking for experience. You're going to be learning. So some of them will like you if you didn't be paying us. We are teaching things that you have paid school fees and whatever but you still don't know. So if they are paying you, they are lacking you. If they are not paying you, then I don't think that should be a point for you to keep today but because you are actually learning. You are learning and you are learning more than just what you are doing. You are going to make mistakes with your things and get away with it. So I think that should not be the focus. Every time I hear people saying is it paying? Are they paying? And people turning down opportunities just because they are not paying? They are not paying. And I don't mean that's a very very wise thing to do. But paying intern is a debatable issue. It's a good thing. I would prefer that people are giving them even a very small stipend just to carry a bus fare and maybe lunch. But if that budget is not there, would you rather they don't give that chance or would you rather you go for it? So for me I would look at the bigger picture. You are going to afford my bus fare and my lunch then I would take the internship because it's a learning that I'm getting. We've heard some of the organization interviewing interns. Do you think they should be interviewed? Yes they should. Please say that because I usually don't see why you should interview an intern. You see when I said before sometimes you could from the pool of interns. So even for the interns you want to have the best. And people are different. In any group of people you will have different people. You will have this particular intern who doesn't have even initiative to do anything. You will have this intern who likes everything that not just the skills, the skills you train but the person you bring into the team. Are you getting? Yes. So the other skills that you could have been looking for apart from the technical skills which is what you are coming to learn because if you are coming from school you may not know how to do this. That's what we will be teaching you. But you are the person. Who are we bringing to do that? Knowing very well. We could one day recruit from our pool of interns. So it's very very very important to know that it's a competitive world. Even joining a school people are interviewed even in a garden. I hear people are interviewed. So it's one of those things you have to stand out and know how to be. And that's why I keep saying even before you go for internship if you get a chance to volunteer even after fomfom, just volunteer. Get to know other things that will make you stand out as a person. Not as the engineer that you are as the teacher that you are as the teacher that you are not as a professional but as a person. What would people want to engage with you? What would you want to bring to our space? Yes. Your final comments to anyone watching us right now and how they can reach you? My final comments would be like I would like us to take internship very seriously because it's part of how we build our experience and we must always know that most people hire for experience more than they hire for academics and most people hire for the personality more than they also hire for academics and stuff like that. So as you go for your internship purpose to build those relationships purpose to build your soft skills purpose to be very proactive One of the things that I have seen in terms mistakes that they make is you come to the internship and the day you have not given you work you are just there eating your fingers and doing nothing. Be proactive. Know why you came for that internship and follow up to be sure that you have been given work always offer a hand to help a different project if you already finished what you are doing. So don't just sit there and don't be the quiet one. If you have a group of interns you have the one who never sees anything never contributes, we never see you because you are always at the back. So purpose to be seen, purpose to help other people purpose to be and even as an intern choose to understand the policies of the organization choose to understand the culture. If it's a dress code don't just assume that you are dressing in college is what you are going to dress understand is it do they allow casual dressing here or do they allow me to dress in a different setup and always ask for feedback. Don't go through all through your internship for the three months or one year and you have never been given feedback on how you are performing and how you like to and again for interns don't come to an organization and live without a mentor exactly within your first second week you should have identified that your line manager or someone who is in the group someone who can actually mentor you to the career someone that you can actually ask questions someone you can actually ask things about how to drive your career and your internship in the process so it's very very very key and even when the course that you are doing is not giving you a chance is not compassionate for you to go for internships please purpose for yourself always look at the end know that you need to be able to compete at the end of your school work so build that path now build your resume through internships in school to reach us you can check us online we are career management center you can also reach to me directly it's Wari Monain that's for Twitter or Jenny Mutinda in Facebook if you just ask Jenny Muticia you'll find me in Facebook you can contact us online or whatever well thank you so much Jen thank you for making time for us do come again well key words from that is gain experience experience is as much as important as what you've learned in school aggressiveness don't just sit back at work be aggressive and have a purpose where you're doing that and networks make networks network network network and take contact as well and get a mentor as well well that's all we had for you here on Y254 today is business Tuesday my name is Miriam Masawa don't go anywhere because the buzz is up next good night and God bless you