An extract from the catalogue of luxury Italian manufacturer Moleskine states: “Our notebooks are books to be written…”
The MBA students at MIP Politecnico di Milano could be described in a similar way. The first chapters in the story of their lives have been completed but there is a whole adventure yet to unfold – and it was, in fact, at Moleskine that one such student, Jaimie Kim, added another chapter to her life’s work.
Jaimie’s career began in Korea, where she worked at IMG and Hermès before choosing the International Full-Time MBA at MIP as the perfect vehicle for furthering her professional development.
One reason for this choice was her recognition of the benefits she would gain from the international nature of the course, with 25 nations being represented in her year’s intake:
“In order to explore my career, it was necessary to see things from various angles with in-depth knowledge”, she explains. “The global perspectives provided me with a more holistic view of business”.
She admits that the students’ differing viewpoints and business cultures meant that while working on a project for Moleskine, teamwork was not always plain sailing – but concluded: “we eventually achieved our goals. We learned a lot from our multicultural approach”.
These corporate internships at leading companies give students the opportunity to put into practice in the real world the management theory which they have been learning at the business school and are an invaluable experience and a means of getting down to the “nuts and bolts” of business.
For companies like Moleskine, as well as top international firms such as IBM, Microsoft and the Boston Consulting Group, it is a win-win situation; not only do they have the pick of the MBA students, giving them access to fresh talent and a wide variety of outlooks, but they also provide input on the MBA course itself, as it is designed in collaboration with MIP’s corporate partners.
During the internships there is therefore an almost symbiotic relationship between the students and the companies: each benefits from the arrangement ̶ the students from their exposure to the latest approaches to management and the chance to put their learning into practice – and the businesses from access to a pool of future MBA graduates already trained in management skills, now becoming conversant with current thinking and also likely to bring original ideas to the table and make their own, personal contributions to the workplace.
In addition to her internship, as an integral part of the MBA course Jaimie took part in a series of Management Boot Camps, selecting from a wide range of options (e.g. Sustainability and Business Ethics, Big Data & Analytics, Luxury & Made in Italy Excellence, Entrepreneurship) those which were the best fit for her interests and aspirations.
For Jaimie, the Boot Camp experience was a “crucial stage” of the course; she sums up her achievements at MIP by concluding: “my MBA… not only gave me an understanding of management, but also provided me with an overview of the strategies around an entire business model”.
With 95% of MBA students from MIP Politecnico di Milano finding new positions within 10 months of graduating, Jaimie is now well-set to move forward and start working on another fascinating chapter in her career.
Read the full article here.
