Experience gained in a real business environment aids decision making

The Citi global transaction services internship offers exceptional exposure to the company and training that is highly customised to interns needs.

'We want to expand individuals' horizons, and also give them the tools necessary to make decisions about what they do in the rest of their career,' said Lisa Somerville, director of human resources for Citi global transaction services in Asia-Pacific.

The two-month internship takes about 12 students from the MBA programme at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. While centred in global transaction services offering solutions such as risk management, interns get to experience other departments.

'That's one of the differentiating things about this programme. In most internship programmes, you typically work only in the group where you've been hired.'

Somerville said that interns also had extensive contact with people from senior management. They work alongside their managers each day and are mentored by them.

Anthony Cheng, who took the internship this summer and is now a global transaction services analyst, said he worked with the regional head of trade services to help analyse the profitability of his business, looking at data for different products and customer bases. 'I was working side by side with the managing director,' Cheng said. 'It gave me great training. He assisted me along the way and when I needed guidance or had questions, he would help me.'

Somerville said the internship also offered training tailor-made for MBA students. So while interns get the more usual product service training, they also get talks from senior mangers to build their wider understanding and coaching in presentation skills.