It might no longer be sexy but the Dunedin business internship programme is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.
The programme, previously known as Sexy Summer Jobs, has been refreshed and rebranded to JobDUN.
The annual programme enables paid internships for tertiary students at Dunedin businesses and the 2019-20 season will open for applications from businesses this month.
Businesses involved are eligible for Dunedin City Council funding of $1000 per intern as a top-up to help cover the costs of the intern's remuneration.
The programme helps businesses take on a student intern while reducing the level of risk when employing a new person.
In the 2018-19 season, there were 48 interns placed in 26 companies and, of those, 30 were employed in full-time, part-time or contract capacities and 25 of those positions were new.
There were 10 full-time-equivalent, nine part-time-equivalent, nine contract and two casual roles.
The top-three sectors taking on interns were ICT (nine businesses), creative (six businesses) and biotech/health technologies (two businesses).
All businesses involved last season said they would use the programme again and would recommend it. A total of 79% of businesses were "very satisfied" with the quality of interns, a survey found.
Someone with experience from both sides of the programme is Education Perfect systems manager Joel Labes.
Mr Labes said he used Language Perfect when he was studying at John McGlashan College.
The Dunedin-based software company was launched in 2007 to provide language learning software to secondary school pupils. Education Perfect, which was launched in 2013, was a spin-off of Language Perfect.
He had an internship there as part of Sexy Summer Jobs and was very supportive of the scheme, Mr Labes said.
Many interns had come through since he joined full-time at the start of 2012. They added "so much", being young and enthusiastic and bringing in fresh eyes and a new infusion of blood, especially during the summer period which was leading into the really busy time of the year, he said.
Mr Labes, who is moving to Wellington but continuing to work remotely for Education Perfect, said he had enjoyed being able to progress through the business.
He had moved around many different parts of the company, starting in customer support before moving to sales and then to his present role in development, where he worked on internal systems to make it easier for other areas of the business, a role he was loving, Mr Labes said.
