Silke, a B.Sc in Psychology student from Germany did a 2 months remote psychology internship with World Unite! out of India.
Silke wrote to us:
“I want to thank you and your colleagues again for the great support. World Unite! Is a very professional platform that I am recommending to my fellow students. Thank you very much for the great experience! I wish you at World Unite! ongoing success and wonderful experiences to you and the people who can get to know the world through you!”
You can read her full internship report here:
My goals:
As part of my university studies for the B. Sc. in Psychology a practical internship is required.
My goals for my internship were to deepen my knowledge in counselling and in occupational and organizational psychology. In addition, I was very interested in learning more about mentoring (especially clients with pathological diagnoses) and about career counselling.
The Internship:
Because of the corona pandemic I was looking for an online internship.
Salma is a clinical psychologist and Rajesh an engineer with a lot of experience in psychometric testing, organizational psychology and conducting trainings and counsellings in the business sector. My deepest gratitude goes to both of them because they provided a very interesting and multifaceted internship.
Topics that were covered throughout my 2 months internship at SPIC were:
- Career counselling for 10th graders and young adults
- Tests that were used for the career counselling: GATB General Aptitude Test Battery, Raven´s Progressive Matrices, Otis test of intelligence, H.G. Bells personality inventory, Kuder´s Interest Test, PF Catell for 18 and above
- Mentoring for teenagers and young adults who scored high on their personality tests to provide them with self-development strategies
- Mentoring for clients with various requests and diagnose
- Insights into organizational psychology (covering KRA (key result areas), KPI (key performance indicator) and competence level in companies and psychometric tests like 16 PF from Cattell or MBTI for recruiting and employee development)
- Regular Courses such as “Basic Counselling Skills”, “Anger Management”, and “Weight Reduction”
- Participating in online webinars about clinical topics and Para Olympics
As interns we were participating in the sessions as observers. Afterwards we wrote session reports about the sessions and about what we learned.
In the course “Basic Counselling Skills” we were also allowed to counsel one of the other participants to practice the learned skills.
Because of the pandemic situation Salma had to conduct most of her counselling and mentor sessions online. This made it possible for us interns to participate in the Google meet or Zoom sessions.
Salma is an open minded and intuitive person. She brings in a lot of power to create spaces for people to heal and especially to find their passion in life. Her and her husband´s believe is that when we are in the right profession, we are not laboring but enjoying what we do. If we get paid for what we enjoy we create win-win situations not only for ourselves but also for others. Therefore, we bring light into the world.
I very much enjoyed learning about the tests Salma and Rajesh use to give the young people and their parents a valid scientific background for their career path decisions.
In her sessions and courses Salma showed a lot of passion for the clients, the participants and the topics covered and managed professionally to motivate the clients and participants to work on their own development. I liked the way she uses stories from her own life to give tangible examples. Now and then she also relaxes and lightens up the situation with her humor.
Rajesh is a structured and humorous person. He offers a lot of experience in the field of organizational psychology. In his sessions he provided us in his witty and energetic way with extensive information and insights into his work.
Organizational wise Salma and Rajesh managed the online internship very well. In the beginning I had a preliminary talk with Salma so she and I could get to know each other. I was also provided with a written welcome instruction to my internship. Salma and Rajesh were always there for us interns when we had questions or requests.
The communication was done through WhatsApp in different group settings. We had a WhatsApp group for every topic: for each course a separate group, for the career counselling and mentoring sessions one group, for organizational psychology another group. In the groups we were notified when sessions would take place and were provided with the invitation link to Google meet or Zoom. In addition, we had contact through e-mail where we also sent our session reports to.
Throughout the 2 months it needed some flexibility from my side because Salma could most of the time provide the notifications of the sessions only on a short terms notice (one or two days in advance). That was due to the challenge that in the pandemic people do not want to plan too far ahead and were not always eager to do the session online. In addition, I would recommend to Salma and Rajesh to briefly explain to the interns the possibilities they can participate in. That is also a suggestion for the interns to specifically ask for sessions or observation possibilities in specific fields and topics they wish to broaden their experience and knowledge in.
Salma and Rajesh seem to very much enjoy working with people from around the globe and put a lot of heart into their work with the interns. If we came up with requests, they made it possible to address the topic or let us participate in a respective session. In addition, it felt for me like actually being there with them in India. They managed to relate on a deeper level with us.
I would like to thank you, Salma and Rajesh, for your passion, for your open hearts and for the insights you provided me with. Even if I did know already many of the techniques you use it was extremely beneficial for me to observe you and fine-tune my knowledge and skills. And I would also like to thank you for the people you connected me with in the sessions and courses. I felt a very nice connection between all of us. May you bless many students and clients with your passion and skills!
Here you can find all information about Silke’s remote psychology internship! Register now!
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