Southwestern internship – gaining life skills through door-to-door selling
Students should develop certain vital skills in them in order to prepare for upcoming challenges from life. However, they can not get practical opportunity to develop personal strengths within the limitations of conventional educational curriculum. If you set a goal for yourself and strive for attaining it, you are supposed to learn a lot in the process. Direct selling of products can be great way to improve on your life skills like patience, thinking ability, innovation, convincing power, leadership skills and others. The Southwestern Company recognized the simple truth years ago, and it started its venture as Southwestern internship since 1868.
Although the company started as a publishing house back in 1855, yet it ventured into direct selling within a few years following the end of civil war. The mission was to help financially weak students by giving them an opportunity to sell the products of the company through door to door. It became popular among students as most of them earned a lot both in terms of money and in terms of life skills. From then onwards, the company has been imparting traineeship for students in their summer breaks. With its base at Nashville, Tennessee in the US, it has now spread its branches in several parts of the world including in countries like UK, Canada, US and others.
Students from nearly 350 colleges from around 30 countries take part in Southwestern Comapny internship programs every summer. They get proper training on direct selling from experts and they can utilize their lessons perfectly through door to door selling of several Southwestern products like reference books, hand books, CD DVD packages, software and others. The best part is that they can buy these things from the company at low rates and sell those to consumers at retail rates. Moreover, they work as contractors and not as employees with the Southwestern Company.
The internship program is a great learning opportunity for students who can interact with people face to face and get hands-on experience on things as well. They can learn important life skills such as independence, confidence, self-motivation and goal-setting and others as well. The program is also a great chance for students to earn some extra bucks in vacation. Potential students can also get a chance to set up their own business with assistance from the company. Moreover, the company expanded its business in several fields like financial services, insurance, fundraising, publishing, consulting, executive search and personal coaching. Students can also get an opportunity to work in one of these associate companies after successful completion of internship programs.