About Sexy Summer Jobs
History
In 2008, 18 of the companies in the Dunedin IT cluster had 109 job vacancies available and struggled to fill these. This staff and skill-shortage was significant for local companies, resulting in considerable strain on existing staff, who in many instances were required to work in areas not specific to their field. The result was staff were having to work longer hours to compensate.
The aim of the Dunedin Internship Program is to improve the flow of top quality college students into Dunedin’s businesses and organisations to help with the skilled staff shortages. But more importantly help companies capture business opportunities that may have otherwise have missed due to lack of good staff being available.
This programme not only qualifies the candidate for the program but also developed and proved their abilities for the work force, with the expectation that many will remain and build their career in Dunedin.
Borne out of the need from local companies struggling to fill available job vacancies and missed commercial opportunities due to being unable to find staff, the program now boast that 1 in 3 interns gets a full-time job after their internship.
Delivered through the Dunedin Internship Programme, using the unique "Sexy Summer Jobs" brand the program delivers an intense and fun "speed-dating" event where College students and companies spend 7 minutes of focused "dating" with each other to see if they are a match. We’ve carried this “matching” facility to the on-line world with www.sexysummerjobs.com.
With support from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and backed by Dunedin City Council funding (The Internship Fund) which is used to reduce the financial pressure on companies to employ an intern, this also helps build trust and confidence in the companies that College interns can deliver.
Based solely on the need from businesses, the program bucks the traditional internship trend where there is no alignment to the student's academic outcomes at all. This initiative gives businesses the freedom to allow students to "get their teeth" into core commercial activities that have real impact on companies bottom line and as such grow the economic profile and wealth of Dunedin.
Today companies across any sector can seek interns through www.sexysummerjobs.com where the advantage is that the program allows business the freedom to "test" the interns in the real world working environment. With internships typically ranging from 4-13 weeks, companies get a strong feel on how the interns fit within their businesses' culture.
Here are our results for the first 2 years-
• 1 in 3 intern gets a full time job in one of our companies after their internship has ended
• $273,600 invested to date from Companies and Council together
• 171 interns have speed-dated with 32 companies
• 71 interns have been offered internships by companies
• 34 jobs created post internships equaling 21 full-time jobs in total
• 70% of companies felt the intern added real commercial value to their business
• 100% of students felt the internship was valuable to their career
• Commercial product created by interns - sales revenue by companies = $1.1 million
• Economic Contribution for Dunedin - $2,374,000 (based-on ICT employee productivity figures)
What we value
We operate on a trust system,..that employers will provide a great service to interns and interns provide a great service to employers.
In New Zealand, unlike Europe and North America, internships are not a common method of engaging students with business. Our programme is only one of two business-focused internship programmes in NZ. In saying that, we believe that this is technology-based economic development at its finest. Firstly, it is driven by the companies based on their desire to solve their needs. Secondly, we're offering a technology-orientated strategy which is both practical and replicable to help tackle the key issue for companies - staff shortage. Thirdly, it builds immense trust and confidence between all parties involved. Fourthly, it takes the traditional internship model and by flipping it on its’ head the program is business driven first and aiming to solve real business problems. Lastly, it's perhaps one of the most effective quasi-staff requirement processes that businesses can use to "test" potential staff before employing them.