What happens when top-talent students self-select internships that align with their passions, skills and career goals?
A powerful, win-win situation.
That’s what happened this fall as students in the Business Analytics program at Weatherhead participated in a “reverse internship model” with Goodyear.
What initially started in 2017 as a pilot idea for Goodyear has turned into an innovative model of mutually beneficial academic-industry partnership.
“Not only do students get corporate and analytical experience here, but we also get a great capability out of them when they’re here interning,” said Barbara Ring, HR Manager, Global IT at Goodyear who has been involved in the most recent internship process. “The students are coming to us with real solutions that we’re implementing in our normal business environment.”
In this Reverse Internship Model (RIM), Goodyear Project Leads from a variety of departments pitch internship project opportunities to business analytics students. Students then rank and prioritize the opportunities based on their passion, skills and career goals. In the final step, Goodyear reviews students’ feedback to interview top candidate for each project to complete the match-making.
Goodyear departments involved in the RIM program include Global Technology, Data Sciences, Digital Engineering Analytics, Category Analytics, Security Automation, Global IT PMO, Americas Digital IT and Corporate PMO.
Ian Dinsmore, a first-year student in the MSM-BA program, says that the reverse internship process has been unique.
“I think this process was helpful because we got to meet face-to-face with a very impressive company from the beginning,” Dinsmore said. “The fact that they expressed interest in us and allowed us to ask as many questions as we wanted before making a decision about which ones we were interested in was a really great thing.”
Students will have the opportunity to interview with hiring managers from multiple departments based on their preferences. Internships will begin in May 2020 and will go through the summer full time and continue part time into the fall semester.
Learn more about the Business Analytics program at Weatherhead.