21st Century MBA Internships: Piracy, Social Media and More

TopMBA.com takes a look at a small sample of the exciting options that technological and social advances of the 21st century have brought to MBA graduates.

While more common in North America than anywhere else in the world, MBA internships can be a vital tool in transferring the knowledge, skills, contacts and everything else gained in a business school classroom to the working world.

As the MBA degree is traditionally seen as a general management qualification, MBA internships are often the first point where a recent graduate hones their post-business school career in a particular industry or specialization.

An MBA internship in film distribution

Advertised by News Corporation for their Fox Searchlight company is an MBA internship in film distribution.

The internship is available under the company’s US-based domestic distribution arm, which is responsible for getting films “from the laboratory to your local theater.” However, rather than a simple haulage operation, “this requires many job functions from planning the release strategy, negotiating the sales terms with theater circuits and tracking box office performance of our films and the marketplace as a whole,” the company explains.

“Upon completion of the internship, the candidate will have an in-depth knowledge of how studio films are distributed and will gain a thorough understanding of the North American theatrical market as a whole, with a focus on the specialty/art-house films market."

The successful candidate is promised the opportunity to learn how the company markets films in theatres and how the distribution group coordinates with the media and publicity groups.

An MBA internship in social media strategy

With over 500 million active users spending more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook alone, social media websites have been a hugely influential trend during the first decade of the century, and businesses are increasingly realizing the potentials of this ever-evolving phenomenon.

Waste Management Inc, a North American company focusing on creating clean energy from recyclable waste is currently looking for “a social media strategist intern to help define and execute the company's social media campaigns and be its primary representative in social media communities.”

Like in other, similar roles, the successful applicant for Waste Management’s internship would be heavily involved with PR, marketing and corporate communications, shaping the online representation of the company through a specific social media strategy designed by the MBA intern.

An MBA internship in piracy managemen

The piracy of entertainment media has been a growing bane to the industry since peer-to-peer (P2P) networking first became popular at the turn of the century, with many internet users exploiting the networks in order to illegally share copies of films and music with one another. Since then, big players in the entertainment media industry have invested huge amounts of time and money in both new technology, and people in attempts to combat the problem.

One of the companies investing in the fight against piracy is Walt Disney Studios, who have an MBA internship in piracy management advertised.

The household name is responsible for “the creative advertising, research, media, publicity and promotion of every movie released theatrically by the Walt Disney Studios - Disney and Touchstone, live-action and animation.” The successful MBA intern would be heavily involved in ensuring that those releases reach the public via legitimate and legal sources.

“Piracy management is conducting research in 15 countries to learn about piracy behavior and explore opportunities to convert consumers from piracy activity to legitimate use,” the company explains. “We need an intern to help analyze incoming research data, model piracy impact, and identify opportunities to convert users to legitimate alternatives based on the survey results from each country.”

An MBA internship in sports media

Here’s another MBA internship opportunity advertised by News Corporation, however this time it’s for their Fox Soccer Channel, a specialty television channel focusing on football (‘soccer’ if you speak American English), but has also branched out into the world of new media.

The MBA intern that the company is hunting for will be focused on their new media assets, which amongst other roles will “assist launching a suite of new fantasy games, developing launch marketing and promotion strategy in collaboration with marketing, on-air promotion and production departments,” plus various ROI and competitor analysis activities on their current new media ventures.

MBA internships are a valuable tool that many graduates use to gain a specialist understanding of an industry. For niche roles, where there may be few professionals with the relevant experience, an MBA internship can really enhance a recent graduate’s résumé or CV, propelling them into an industry which can often prove more enjoyable and lucrative than the traditional career haunts of the management world.

These are just a handful of examples of the management internships currently available to those business school graduates looking to gain a footing in a career not necessarily seen as the norm for MBAs. While the peak application time for such internships is usually during December, many such as these are available throughout the year.