Job Hunting in CSR, Part 3: After All Is Said and Done, Where Are The Jobs? - A blog by Aman Singh

This is the final excerpt from a series of interviews I conducted with four MBA candidates (see footnote for biographical information) who graduated—or expect to soon—with a focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this portion, the graduates discuss their internship experiences and the dilemmas of conducting a job search in corporate responsibility.   Finding an Internship in CSR   For Ashley Jablow, the traditional MBA summer internship search was only the beginning of a long road ahead. "I had a lot of trouble looking for an internship because I wanted to get a CSR internship, but didn't have any relevant experience. I didn't get any bites when I was applying for jobs that said 'CSR intern' in the title," she said. Eventually, she settled for building on her fundraising experience by working in corporate communications with a large consumer goods agricultural co-op that considers community a part of its DNA.   Geetanjali Singh, on the other hand, wanted to do an internship with a nonprofit to complement her corporate experience. Her internship search also had a unique catch: She wanted to do an internship in India. And it worked out: she spent her summer in India interning with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). For Singh, working for an organization with UNDP's global scale resulted in some key realizations:   "What it taught me first and foremost was how unsuitable I was for the nonprofit world. Even though UNDP is a global nonprofit, the mentality, the attitude and the way work is conducted is very different from a corporate setting. This was when I decided to connect my passion for working with grassroots and inclination toward a corporate setting by focusing on CSR."   continue reading