IEEE Region 10 Student Internship & Skill Development 2016
IEEE Malaysia Section was the pilot site to launch the inaugural IEEE Region 10 Student Internship and Skill Development (SISD) Program on the 28th of May 2016 at the Selangor Human Resource Development Centre (SHRDC). The event was the brainchild of the IEEE Region 10 Adhoc Committee on Entrepreneurship, Internship & Innovation and was led by Preeti Bajaj who heads the Internship and Skill Development Sub-Committee. IEEE Universiti Putra Malaysia Student Branch (IEEESB UPM) co-organized the event. Other technical co-organizers were SHRDC, local mass recruiters; Talentcorp and CREST as well as IEEE Young Professionals (R10 and Malaysia). Financial co-sponsors were IEEE Malaysia Section, IEEE Computer Society Malaysia Chapter and IEEE Power and Energy Society Malaysia Chapter. A total of 7 industries and 48 IEEE Student/Graduate Student Members from 9 IEEE Malaysia Student Branches registered for the event. The one-day event was successfully executed with the cooperation and participation of 12 invited speakers, 13 IEEESB UPM committee members, 9 evaluators and IEEE volunteers.
The event was designed to provide opportunities for students to acquire interpersonal skills from industry experts and gain knowledge on the required technical skills needed to work in electrical & electronics field as well as computer & information technologies. Besides that, it also provides an opportunity for students to obtain exposure on international internships. The program was designed in three stages, which were i) data collection from industry and students prior to the event, ii) evaluation of the students’ skills versus industry requirements during the program and iii) gap analysis/training suggestions of the evaluated students. Students who match industry requirements were recommended to the respective industry for internship whereas those who didn’t were recommended with additional training to sharpen their skills.
Among the speakers at the event were Dr. P. Susthitha Menon, Chair of Student Activities Malaysia Section; Dr. Abdul Rahim Ahmad, IEEE Malaysia Section Committee; Dr. Norazmi Alias, Senior Vice President of CREST; Hajjah Mahuran Saro, Head of Critical Skill Monitoring Committee of TalentCorp; Dr. Anang Hudaya, Chair of IEEE Young Professionals Malaysia; Mr. Adrian Sie, IEEE PES Malaysia Section Committee, Mr. Anas Hasbullah, ex-intern at Paygate Co Ltd, Seoul, Korea and Ms. Esther Ling, IEEE YP R10/Malaysia. Besides that, there were also online speakers invited through Skype. They were Dr Preeti Bajaj, Charmain Williams and Parshva Bavishi from IEEE HQ and Dr Archana Shrivastava from GH Raisoni College of Engineering.
In the evening, “Hands-on Session on IEEE ResumeLab and IEEE Collabratec” and “Career Interview Session” for the participants were conducted in parallel sessions by IEEE YP and evaluators. This was to provide an opportunity for the participants to write effective resumes and to experience a career interview session. An open discussion between the evaluators and the participants was conducted at the end of the evening session. Evaluators gave feedback on improving English communication skills, preparing outstanding resumes and tips to ace an interview session. Also, the participants were advised to show their passion and confidence while attending the interviews.
Feedback forms were distributed during the event. Positive feedbacks were obtained from all the participants where they were satisfied with the organization of the event in terms of food, venue and volunteers. Some improvement were suggested on the time for each talk which need to be lengthened as they feel that the information given are very useful and hence need to be elaborated further. The evaluators also think that the interview session should be done in a longer period of time. All information of students, industries, evaluators and skill sets have been uploaded into the Internship Portal at http://ghrce.edu.in/ieee.
IEEE Malaysia Section would like to thank everyone who was involved in the successful execution of the program and we look forward to make the program into an annual event in an effort to bridge the gap between IEEE Student members, IEEE YP and Industries. Photos of the event are available at our Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ieeemalaysiastudents
