Whatever happened to ...
… the Indonesian students who interned at Colruyt Group last year? We asked them how their career and project are evolving since their professional experience in Belgium.
Four new Indonesian students are already looking forward to their internship at Colruyt Group. They still have to wait until October. Isadora, Lia and Municha finished their internship last year and all three of them have even found work in their home country. Curious to know how their internship helped them with that.
Do you feel your internship in Belgium helped you find a job?
Certainly! The companies where we applied for a job were really surprised. They were impressed and our experience made us attractive candidates. Moreover, the application training in Belgium taught us how to handle an application interview and how to emphasize our own qualities. It is very important to know your own strengths and weaknesses.
The purpose of your internship was to learn about circular economy and waste recycling to start a project about that in your home country. How is that going?
We mainly want to influence our environment positively. Not just by protecting the environment, but also by teaching other people. For this reason we now organise fun activities such as a quiz about a clean environment and lectures for primary school kids about how to handle waste. Meanwhile we also convinced friends, colleagues, students and alumni of our school to join our project.
In October, Indonesian trainees are coming to Belgium again. Do you have tips for them on how best to prepare?
It is very important to speak English, otherwise communication can be pretty tricky. Also do some research about Belgian culture and their customs. It avoids quite a few surprises (laughter).
What have you learned about Belgian culture that you would like to see in your country as well?
In Belgium it does not matter much what your religion is. It doesn't matter either whether you are married or not. That is quite different in Indonesia. Belgian people take more care of the environment. It's much cleaner here. You also have a lot of modern technology. And yet, you can rapidly and effectively settle a problem in a simple way.
Read more about the internship of Isadora, Lia and Municah or about our project in Indonesia.
