By Musfirah Hasan
GOMBAK, 23 March 2015: Four groups of IIUM students from various kulliyyah participated in the SME-University Internship Programme organised by SME Corp Malaysia and Ministry of Higher Education that was established since 2008. The champion will represent IIUM at the National SME-University Internship Programme that is normally held in October.
This year marks the fifth year for IIUM to participate in this programme.
The objectives of this programme are to promote entrepreneurship among students and to provide exposure on real life business environment as well as to help the students to acquire the essential skills whether they are working in the small firm or to start their own enterprises.
Deputy Director of the Office of Industrial Links (OIL), Dr. Norbaiduri Ruslan, who is in charge of this programme said that students are given the opportunity to learn about entrepreneur skills just in case if they cannot find job related to their field of study, they can start a new business.
This programme is a kind of reality show that requires the participant to be a junior business consultant with a mission to save a company that is not doing well. Each group needs to find ways to improve the small company that has been assigned to them from various angles such as marketing, product promotion, stock market and so on.
œAll groups need to do a presentation at the end of the month for three months and they will be judged not only by the judges from SME Corp but also by the reputable corporate figures in the business world, explained Dr. Norbaiduri.
The judging process will not be easy as the judges are not going to view the participants as students. They will be treated like real workers who are doing job at the real organisation.
At the beginning of this programme, participants need to attend the entrepreneur workshop, marketing workshop and communication skills workshop to learn about the know-how in business world. Basically, most of the participants are not business students.
The champion from IIUM will compete with other participants from public higher learning institutions. Last year, IIUM got through the final stage for the first time and came out as second runner-up in the national competition.***