GETTING paid during the summer break is the dream for any university student. What’s even better is getting paid while racking up valuable experience in the area aligned to one’s career.

Twenty-three-year-old Deja-Nae Chin Black has been living that ultimate dream for the past four consecutive years, as a participant in the National Commercial Bank Jamaica (NCB) Limited Summer Internship Programme.

Chin Black, a recent graduate from the University College of the Caribbean’s tourism & hospitality management programme, is one of 155 interns at the bank this summer. For the first three years, she was assigned to the NCB Foundation. This year she works with the Group Marketing and Communications Unit.

She describes the programme as a “great learning platform”.

“This experience will certainly prepare me for my career path, build my personal brand and mold me into the professional I aim to be. Being a part of the NCB family, I have an opportunity to use my theoretical and practical knowledge from my degree programme and previous job experience,” she says.

The NCB Summer Internship Programme began in 1998 and was initially designed to provide students with an opportunity to consolidate and apply the knowledge acquired from their academic preparation into meaningful on-the-job experience. In 2008, the programme was restructured to place greater emphasis on the role the company plays in the interns’ personal development, and provide opportunities for them to develop skills through addressing real-work situations.

“We allow them to understand the relevance of academics in relation to what it takes to be successful in the workplace. It also provides students with focused and structured work experience through responsibility for meeting timelines, making decisions, and working in teams. Interns develop a foundation of general workplace skills and are able to acquire information and skills in their chosen career cluster,” explains Rickert Allen, Senior General Manager for Group Human Resources and Development at NCB.

He indicates that from the organisation’s perspective, the programme also provides it with an avenue to execute value-based projects which enhance business results, and to assess potential talent and create relationships from which future employment opportunities may arise.

Allen points out that the success of the programme is evaluated from the perspective of both the interns and their respective supervisors.

“The evaluation forms a critical input of the ongoing refinement of the programme in order to achieve our corporate objectives,” he states.

Tiffany Higgins, a third-year student at the University of the West Indies, is in her third year of the programme and is currently assigned to one of the bank’s subsidiaries — NCB Capital Markets. She concurs with Allen that the real world expereince is invaluable.

“My experience thus far has been a mind-opening one. It allows for a window into the working world, which only a few are able to harness and it has been providing me with vital information that will allow me to foster the right attributes for my future endeavours,” she says.

“I can safely say that NCB is the type of organisation that will forever and always put its clients first and treating them with the utmost respect; it’s an organisation that I can trust,” she adds.

Some of the other interns this year are Jamilia Crooks, Trevell Duncan, Simone Barnes, and Sidonia Hyde. Crooks, Barnes, and Chin Black are assigned to the marketing and communications unit, while Duncan and Hyde are with NCB Foundation.

In addition to Chin Black, Crooks and Hyde just completed tertiary studies, and are hoping that the NCB internship will translate into permanent employment. Crooks studied human resource management and Hyde pursued marketing, both at the University of the West Indies.

Duncan and Barnes, meanwhile, are still pursuing studies at the University of Technology, Jamaica, in dentistry and marketing, respectively.

To participate in the NCB programme, students must submit an application, must be 18 years or older, and must meet the minimum requirements of five CSEC passes, including mathematics and English Language. Undergraduate or graduate students in a relevant field of study are encouraged to apply, as well as those who are recipients of scholarships funded by the NCB Group.

The number of places is dependent on the number of participating units within the NCB Group.

The programme this year began on June 9 and runs until August 28.