The subsidiary firms of the Dunedin City Council-owned holdings company already ran their own directors internship schemes, and a similar initiative for DCHL itself made sense, DCHL chairman Graham Crombie said.
"We have been looking to pull this together for a while and have been working with the Institute of Directors to make it happen," Mr Crombie said.
"If you look across our portfolio, we will be looking for various directors, all with different skills."
The requirements of the holding company would be a different skill set to the Taieri Gorge Railway, for example.
The updated scheme means a 12-month directors internship is available in each of DCHL’s companies, and with DCHL itself.
The seven internships start in January and involve 12-15 hours of work a month.
The positions are unpaid, but shadowing board members would provide excellent experience and give the interns an insight into the role of directors, Mr Crombie said.
"Doing it across the group means we have a chance to get a wide range of people involved," Mr Crombie said.
"The institute has done a really good job of getting people interested in governance and giving them some basic training.
"What is missing in the middle is the opportunity to get started.
"It’s the ‘how do I get my first job?’ scenario, and the intern programme is a great way to get people the experience of what it is like in real life, not like what the text books say it is like."
