Five companies in the final for best internship

Aasted is one of the five finalists because they have provided a very educational and challenging internship for Lasse Fonnesbek Drustrup.

Educational and versatile

Lasse Fonnesbek Drustrup was an intern during the fall of 2016 while studying professional bachelor’s degree in international sales and marketing management. Now, he is a fulltime employee at the company, he quickly came to know.

- I haven’t just been allowed to work with marketing, but also with other processes in sales and production at different levels, says Lasse Drustrup Fonnesbek.

He emphasizes the trust and responsibility that has been bestowed upon him during his internship. He nominated Aasted in the hope that other students might get the same experience.

Seize the opportunity

- It is always an honour when someone recognises our presence. We are not known in the wide public as such, so being recognised for what we are developing and making is appreciated, since we need skilled young people to further develop the company, says Allan Aasted, co-owner, Vice Chairman of the Board and former CEO at Aasted.

Both Allan Aasted and the closest supervisor during the internship, Chief of Marketing Anders Bigom, praises Lasse Fonnesbek Drustrup for seizing opportunities when they arise.

- There is a great drive in him and he is extremely accommodating. At the same time, he is open to trying new things and to take on new tasks even though they might not be in his field of expertise, says Anders Bigom.

Azets has been chosen as a finalist because the company has managed to structure a solid internship with a good balance between challenges and a safe environment.

The great match

- I nominated Azets because I was very well received and because of their openness to the subjects I wanted to learn about. They received me as I was a regular employee right from the beginning, says Marie Vilsøe, currently at the last part of her internship during the Financial Controller AP degree.

Azets was a very deliberate choice of internship for Marie Vilsøe. She wanted the possibility of a wide variety of tasks, and her competencies matched the need of the company very well, says Graduate Simon Kastrupsen, her closest supervisor at Azets.

- It exceeded our expectations, I would say. Marie has been extremely motivated and active in seeking out new tasks. She has also been granted a great deal of autonomy and had a lot of projects allocated to her. I think that we’ve had a great match on both a professional and a personal level, he says.

Space to learn

The internship company appreciates to nomination and the place in the final.

- It is a big cadeau, so to speak. It means that we are doing well and that Marie has enjoyed her internship and hopeful can take something with her. That she has learned a lot, says HR consultant Annemarie Franke.

And indeed she has, says the jury from Cphbusiness charged with bringing the field of nominations down to the final five.

- Azets has provided Marie with good learning opportunities, and she has been treated as an equal in the workplace. For example, during work on a budget of liquidity, Marie has been able to put theory into practise and experience how relevant her skills acquired at the Financial Controller programme are. A safe environment and many professional challenges has amounted to a significant development of Marie’s competencies, the jury wrote.

During the internship at the Computer Science AP degree, Debitoor has provided Daniel Hillmann the opportunity to put his skills to use on concrete and critical projects, thereby creating a highly educational internship. On that ground, the IT company is chosen to be one of the five finalists.

Real projects, real learning experience

At Debitoor, the place in the finals of Cphbusiness Internship of the Year is well received.

- Naturally, we are very happy about it. We have never had an intern in the development department, so it was new to us. It has been an exciting time and a learning experience for us too. It is important that we, as a company, succeed in teaching others and that the intern learns from the experience, says Senior Developer Jonatan Pedersen.

During the internship at the Computer Science AP degree, Daniel Hillmann has been working on some of the most critical parts of the company and has been an asset to the company from day one.

- It has been super exciting. It was a novel feeling at first, of course, being a student and being granted so much responsibility, but then again, that’s when you learn. And it’s not like I’ve been on my own. The others have been there for me, says Daniel Hillmann, who now works as a part-time employee at Debitoor alongside his continuing studies.

Met all expectations

At Debitoor, they didn’t know exactly what level of expertise to expect from an intern at the Computer Science AP degree.

- We were very pleasantly surprised with Daniel. It’s great to see someone who just takes the bull by the horns and exhibits exemplary work ethics, says Jonatan Pedersen from Debitoor.

Daniel Hillmann has also been very satisfied with the internship. That’s his reason for nominating Debitoor for Cphbusiness Internship of the Year.

- It was because I was super satisfied with my internship. I thought it was great, and I took a lot away from it, applying everything we have learned at school at a real company. It met all my expectations, says Daniel Hillmann.

Nordea Lyngby has provided Jonas Bang Andersen with a challenging and solid internship during his studies as a bachelor of finance.

Just as the regular employees

From the first day, Jonas Bang Andersen made it clear, that his goal was to become as good as the other financial advisors at the bank.

- I won’t be the judge of whether or not that goal was achieved, but I know that I learned a lot, and during the later part of my internship, I held a many meetings and did the work of financial advisors, says Jonas Bang Andersen, who chose to nominate the company to shine a light on the great colleagues and financial advisor Elise Eilsborg, his internship counsellor.

The two defined the expectations and goals at the beginning of the internship. Jonas Bang Andersen’s ambitious goals meant, that he would have to learn as much as a regular financial advisor.

- We have actually been running him exactly as a regular financial advisor. He has participated in as many meetings and has been allowed to host meetings, where he did to talking. Our priority has been for him to develop in the time he was here, says Elise Eilsborg.

Could not help it

Nordea Lyngby puts a great effort into training the next generation, and being in the final of Cphbusiness Internship of the Year matters to them.

- We put great effort into the stay of our interns, and we have heard from other interns that they pass on word that we are a good place to be an intern. That means that it pays off to allocate resources to teach them as much as possible while they are here and not use them for tasks that doesn’t offer educational value, says Elise Eilsborg and concludes;

- We are very happy about the place in the final and see it as a confirmation that we are doing the right thing and that it is worth the effort.

For Jonas Bang Andersen, the award was an opportunity to give something back.

- When I saw the post from Cphbusiness that the nomination window was open, I thought; Okay, this is the ideal opportunity to praise my colleagues, to show them that I appreciate it. I could not help it, he says.

The Roger Smith Hotel in New York is one of the five finalists because they have provided an internship stay, enabling Christoffer Terkelsen, student of Service, Tourism and Hospitality Management, to develop his competencies and at the same time contribute to the company.

Theory put to use

When the opportunity to nominate an internship for Cphbusiness Internship of the Year caught Christoffer Terkelsen’s eye, I got him thinking.

- What exactly have I learned during the last three months? I think that it has been amazing to be here in New York, learning how things can also work. Being part of a family-owned hotel in Midtown Manhattan where everything else is very corporate. It’s simply amazing, says Christoffer Terkelsen.

In nominating his internship, he got to put the experience into words, including the opportunity to put theory into use, benefitting the hotel.

- Christoffer has experienced both personal and professional growth during his internship and experienced how theoretical knowledge acquired at school could be put to use in practise, the jury responsible for selecting the final five internships wrote.

A history of training

The Roger Smith Hotel in New York has a long tradition of training the next generation.

- We are extremely honored to be nominated for this wonderful award! Our Management Training program is a source of deep pride for us at the Roger Smith Hotel - we firmly believe that the program creates a mutual benefit relationship between the trainees and the full time management team of the hotel, says Phoebe Knowles, Vice President, Roger Smith Hotel.

The program has been in existence for over 20 years, and even though the hotel usually takes on interns for a year at a time, Christoffer Terkelsen managed to land the four-month internship, which is the norm at the AP degree in Service, Hospitality and Tourism Management.

The internship has provided him with lots of valuable experiences such as the value of professional networking.

- It has pushed the boundaries for me personally, having to initiate contact with a person that was unprepared for me approaching. It is amazing what you can achieve, moving from talking over a cup of coffee to suddenly having an event at the hotel, says Christoffer Terkelsen.