Good career opportunites in general are scarce in Pakistan. Internship opportunities in particular are quite limited. Internship programs take some effort to set up and not all companies support the internship programs. In my opinion good interns bring fresh ideas, perspective and energy and create goodwill and are well worth the effort. I asked a telecom student at SZABIST about his views on internship. His response:
It is very difficult to get opportunities in top notch mobile companies in Pakistan. Companies like Mobilink, Telenor, Ufone and Warid visit quite regularly or at least once a year in top notch institutions of Engineering and Business Administration like IBA, NED, UET (Lahore), LUMS and CBM and take evaluations tests. Later the short listed candidates are interviewed and the few lucky ones get through. Not to mention, there are always few candidates who use back door entry through good PR and other links with some1 in the management of that company to get in but by and large merit prevails in most of these companies. Its true that there are many talented individuals in Pakistan but not many opportunities exist for them so many go abroad.
On the TGP forum, another recent graduate of FAST-NU shared his internship experience:
I was lucky to secure an internship in the O&M dept of Telenor Pakistan comprising of six weeks last year, but a heavy majority of our first batch passed out without any “proper” internship where they could groom themselves professionally. There is another problem, that is of relative closeness of the Telecom sector. There maybe a lot of vertical growth in various organizations but there is less horizontal growth. We need right direction from the industry. More structured recruitment and internship programs shall be a great step in that direction.
Ufone and Telenor have ‘formal’ internship programs advertised on their site. Other job sites such as Mobilink, www.rozee.pk and www.finaljob.com.pk are also good places to search for internships and jobs. What about multinational companies such as Huawei and ZTE? These companies are popular with job seekers so it would be nice if someone can share information about internships or jobs there.
The excerpt from Ufone’s site below talks about a well-structured internship and leaves a good impression. The real question, as mentioned above, is how do we extend these opportunities to more talented students?
Ufone offers paid 6-8 weeks internship programs to fresh graduates, college students from various disciplines in all the major departments. This program is designed in such a way that it ensures maximum learning in your chosen career area and provides you an insight into our company, work and people. You will receive valuable on-the-job training, opportunities to learn, coupled with challenging projects and assignments.
The internship at Ufone is objective/assignment based. These are reviewed and evaluated at the end of internship. In addition, interns are paired with a mentor for further guidance. A project summary is required to be submitted to the supervisor and HR at the end of your internship.
When I wrote about phone address book a while ago I did not know about Jaiku, an address book utility company. I read today at ComputerWorld that Google has bought them. Jaiku provides peresence information right inside the address book, allows you to text updates to Jaiku and follow your contacts and channels on the go. This sounds like a better twist on Twitter with more features. Another advantage is that it is a full application with api for 3rd party apps. On the down side this is something limited to certain handsets. Here’s more from Jaiku site:
TelecomPk.Net is a leading source of information and analysis about Pakistan Telecom industry. 
