London Fashion Baby

London Fashion Baby

Friday, 2 September 2011

Doing an internship with Bosch

Well I think that now it is the time to give some hard and useful facts about my internship in Switzerland
:-)

If you are interested in doing an Bosch internship, you should just search a free vacancy either on the Bosch website itself or on another like for example http://www.unicum.de/ which I personally like best. I found my internship on the Bosch website for Switzerland. The process is really easy: select the vacancy you like (Marketing, controlling, logistic etc) and send your application to the responsible person. The internships usually start around august and february for six months. After you sent your application, you usually will be contacted by the responsible product manager for the area you want to work in. Then its time to prepare for an interview either in the company itself or through telephone. In my case I had to do two interviews per phone, because I was in Spain at this time. The first interview included all the standard questions about "what are your strengths and weaknesses?", "why powertools?", "what do you think about powertools", "name some problems you had in your professional and study life and how did you deal with them?" etc. Quiet easy if you thought about it before. The second interview was really easy for me too. I had to do a short marketing plan based on the four "Ps" and had half an hour time. Then she called me again and I had to present what I've prepared. Right at the end of the interview she told me that I have the internship. Of course I said yes :-)

Next step was to plan the trip there and all the little burocratic things: Bosch sends you a list with some adresses where you can life from shared appartments to rooms for rent in houses owned by a couple or a single lady. Those rooms are often cheaper then the ones you can normally find in Switzerland (around 450 until 600 CHF). Some are directly paid by the company and therefore debt your salary, others you have to pay to the owner. If you are doing an internship here you get around 2500 to 2700 CHF without taxes, inssurance etc. The money you earn seems to be related whether or not you are 24 at the beginning of your internship. I got 2700 CHF and with taxes included I still got 2350 CHF which is really good for an intern. Although Switzerland is an expensive country. When you get there you have to order the "foreigner identity card" at the office for habitants, foreigners etc. Normally you do it your first day at work as well as opening a new account. I personally can recommend Postfinance, where you can easily open a new account and get the necessary information right away. Because you need your account number etc for the human ressource department as soon as possible because if you have it the second day at work before 9:00 am they can transfer you your money even for the first half month! And this is better than waiting until the end of the next month to get your next salary!

Work hours are normally 8 hours a day and when you start depends strongly on your product manager and the work load. But it is normal to do overtime which is not that bad because they pay you the overtime with 25% more at the end of your internship. But I have to say that they only pay you until 60 hours! The rest you have to compensate with free days or something ;-) You also get 10 days vacation which you can take whenever you want if you spoke with your PM before. I've learned a lot during my internship and it is really interesting to see what is marketing and product management all about! You also dont have to wear business clothes because most of the employees are dressed normal.

I can only recommend you to do an internship here because you learn so many things, work in an international team and you have really good chances if you are interested in doing other internships/trainees etc afterwards, because you know the right people and many of the interns stay here and work as a junior product manager or something similar!

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