Graduates who have completed an internship programme are far more likely to find permanent employment
There’s a skills shortage in South Africa. A simple scan of the headlines reveals that the country is short on technical skills that play an important role in many key industries. The Career Junction Employment Insight Report for 2022 found that the most severe skill shortages are evident in the Finance and IT sectors, while business management and engineering skills are also in short supply. The report suggests that training facilities and tertiary institutions should align to industry needs in terms of skills and qualifications. This also highlights the need for organisations within industries to play a part in developing the skills needed in their sectors.
The manufacturing sector needs skills
The manufacturing sector is an important part of South Africa’s economy, contributing to the national GDP and formal sector employment, and playing a crucial role in supplying goods and materials for export markets. However, as the ageing workforce nears or enters retirement, skilled workers’ valuable legacy knowledge is leaving the industry without knowledge transfer taking place. Compounding this issue, manufacturers are reporting a skills mismatch between the classroom learning of recent graduates and the requirements of workplace-ready employees. This is causing strain within an industry that is crucial to the South African economy.
Manufacturers have identified that even with tertiary education completed, many new graduates lack foundational workplace readiness skills. However, graduates who have completed an internship programme are far more likely to find permanent employment because of their valuable exposure to the real-world work environment.
“As a company that supports the manufacturing industry, we believe that we have a responsibility to develop the skills needed in this critical industry to help the ongoing digitalization of the manufacturing industry in Africa,” says Mark Wilson, CEO of SYSPRO EMEA & APAC. “With this challenge in mind, it made sense for us to launch an internship programme that not only introduces vital skills into the manufacturing sector, but that also addresses the skills mismatch between employers and new graduates,” he explains.
Internships provide vital workplace skills
By aligning the needs of employers with those of recent graduates looking to enter the manufacturing industry, SYSPRO took meaningful steps to grow the expertise within the industry by introducing an internship programme. The programme started in 2016, and has grown steadily each year since, with SYSPRO interns being snapped up by SYSPRO partners and customers at the end of their nine-month programme.
“What we found is that it’s not only technical skills that are needed. Developing workplace-relevant soft skills such as problem solving, networking, leadership and presentation skills have really benefited the talented young people in our internship programme. Being able to communicate effectively in the workplace, ask the right questions and listen actively is a crucial factor in helping these young graduates become an asset to the organisation they are placed in,” says Marius Wessels, Manager: Professional Services for SYSPRO Africa, who is closely involved with the programme.
Initially, the programme focused on classroom learning with a small exposure to on-site involvement through job shadowing. However, the SYSPRO team recognised that to produce workplace-ready potential employees, there needed to be more on-site involvement. Now, the programme offers five months of intensive classroom training covering not only technical and product skills, but also vital soft skills. SYSPRO interns then spend two months within the SYSPRO ecosystem, doing job shadowing across several corporate divisions before they are placed for on-site experience within the company’s partner and customer ecosystem.
Ishmael Mbanjwa was one of the first interns in the programme when it started. For him, it was an experience that set him up for future success in the industry. “We were a small group of five people, and it was an incredible opportunity to learn from each other and from the experts who taught us and encouraged us to ask questions and understand the product,” he says. He worked in SYSPRO for three years after completing the internship programme, before joining a SYSPRO customer.
Ntongase Mathabela, a Product Marketing Specialist at SYSPRO, got her start in the company through the Internship Programme. “It was a great stepping stone into my career, because we learned so much — professionalism, presentation skills, and building confidence as a young professional. They don’t teach you that at university. All of those foundational skills helped prepare us for our jobs,” she comments. “Now, as a product marketing specialist, I use those presentation skills every week!”
Motshedisi Ntwe, a solutions consultant at SYSPRO, says the internship provided an invaluable bridge between the theoretical “book learning” of her studies and the implementation of that knowledge in a business setting. Motshedisi studied management accounting before she was accepted for the internship programme, and found that the internship experience opened up a lot of opportunities. “I would definitely recommend it,” she comments.
Each intake of interns is a group with diverse educational and personal backgrounds, but they work as a team during their internship. “There were 12 of us on the course, and we learned so many different skills. We were competitive, but also very collaborative. We still talk to each other today,” says Ntwe.
“What I learned during the internship has allowed me to flourish in my career. The internship was a great opportunity to learn from others. Because of the grounding I received through the programme, I understand SYSPRO inside and out. Now I am a senior consultant helping others understand the system,” says Mbanjwa.
Demand for workplace-ready graduates is high
“The response to the programme has been phenomenal,” says Wessels. “In 2016 when we initiated the programme, we had a group of five. In 2021, we received 4 500 applications from talented young graduates and in 2023, we will have a group of 20 graduates completing our programme. In seven years, we have produced more than 100 interns, and 60% are still placed and working within the industry, with nearly all working at SYSPRO, or with SYSPRO partners and customers,” he adds.
“As an industry leader, we had a responsibility to not only build skills within our own network, but to ensure that skilled employees are placed throughout the industry. It’s a testament to the success of this programme that although we increase the number of interns each year, we cannot keep up with the demand from our partners and customers for intern placements,” says Wilson.
Case studies – How internships help develop more productive employees
Ntongase Mathabela is nothing if not tenacious. After studying for a diploma in sports management, she applied for an internship at SYSPRO. When she didn’t get accepted, she went back to her studies, this time studying business administration — then she applied for the SYSPRO Internship programme again. This time, she was successful, but Covid happened. Finally, in 2021, she arrived at SYSPRO, ready to soak up every learning opportunity given to her.
Mathabela believes that the internship programme was a great stepping stone into her career. As a group, the interns learned not only technical skills, but the soft skills needed in the workplace — professionalism, presentation skills, business etiquette, all of which built confidence for the professional workplace; in her words, “skills they don’t teach you at university”. From the beginning, Mathabela had a keen interest in marketing and opted for a job shadowing placement in the product marketing team. Now, she is a Product Marketing Specialist at SYSPRO. She believes that presenting in front of audiences as part of the internship experience has given her a great advantage, as this is something she regularly does in her current job.
Being part of an internship programme also boosted her skills in other ways. “We learned so much from each other: some interns were really good at accounting, some had great IT skills and others were good in business. We worked as a team and would help each other in understanding all the coursework and content. It really helps you to deal with people from different backgrounds and cultures.” She also believes that the exposure to different business areas, such as distribution, finance, manufacturing, and experiences such as visiting a factory shop floor, really broadened her understanding of the industry she now works in. “The basics we learned from the internship have really helped me a lot in terms of understanding the product.”
Nelisiwe Mokwane had a different journey into the SYSPRO Internship Programme. She started out in a SYSPRO learnership and progressed to the Internship programme from there. Competition for places was fierce — just like every other applicant, she applied and went through several rounds of interviews and testing before she was accepted into the programme.
The programme gave her insight into the sector she wanted to join. Mokwane originally studied software development. Job shadowing during the internship gave her realistic expectations of the workplace, and valuable exposure to the fast-paced work environment. “I learned so much about myself. I learned how the software team works. I saw for myself that there are many different roles in the team, and you don’t need to be a developer to play an important role. This is how I developed my interest in software testing, and now I am a software tester at SYSPRO.”
Palesa Motshidi also has positive memories of her experience in the programme. After she graduated from university with a degree in Industrial Psychology and Economics, she was working as a junior bookkeeper when she heard about the SYSPRO internship from a friend who was a part of the programme at the time. She applied and was accepted into the programme. Like every intern, Motshidi worked in various departments across the company, and expected to use her academic background in finance, but over the course of the year, she realised that her interests lay elsewhere.
“Our Academy Manager at the time, Deirdre Fryer, was a wonderful mentor, and encouraged me to use what I had learned in other areas to think laterally about where I’d like to work,” says Motshidi. With her support, Motshidi joined the marketing team on a trial basis. At the time the team was relatively new to the company, and she gravitated towards the public relations function. “I found that I loved the public relations role even though I had studied something quite different at the outset. The SYSPRO team was really supportive of my move,” Palesa explains.
The teamwork in the group was another asset she appreciated. “We all had different academic backgrounds, and different strengths. I was really good at sales and customer engagement, others in product information, testing or implementation. We would all help each other — and it teaches you what business is all about. No one can be good at everything, but when we each have our own speciality, we thrive as a team. Regardless of the area of the business we ended up in, we use what we learned in the programme. For example, even though I work in PR, having a technical product background is a huge benefit,” she says.
For Mathabela, the benefits have been apparent. “When I started my job, I could dive straight in on the first day. I started as a product marketing assistant, and a year later I was a product marketing specialist. I honestly believe that it would have taken me two or three years to progress if it wasn’t for the deeper understanding of the business and the products that I developed. I would not be as far as I am in my career if it was not for the SYSPRO internship.”