Arab Intern’s initial idea started out as the brainchild of a bunch of college students working from their dorm (isn't that how Facebook started? Is Arab Interns the next Facebook?). They realized just how hard it was for MENA students to find an internship to jump start their professional career. So they set out to change the way students, graduates, universities and employers could interact in a region where “wasta” still is the modus operandi for landing a cool internship let alone landing that great job. Hence Arab Interns was built to connect fresh graduates with leading companies across MENA, starting with the essential internship “first step”. After sleepless nights and a lot of work (and pizza!), the ambitious crew developed an elaborate online platform that offers tangible commercial value as it addresses key market segments, a painful need and no existing solutions (or any in sight). Arab Interns allows students to learn about exciting internship opportunities that they would have never heard about otherwise thanks to the young startups’ efforts in connecting with leading employers across the region. Furthermore, the platform allows for in depth information about companies’ corporate culture, core values and other information that they deem relevant when considering one company over another. Students can also access a bunch of useful tools to maximize their odds of catching employers’ attention… Nice! Bottom line: Arab Interns offers a win-win offer for both fresh graduates and MENA employers by creating a user-friendly service that makes great sense and sets out to solve a painful need. Arab interns is initially launching in Lebanon through partnerships with leading universities. Several reputed investors have already expressed interest in the young Lebanese-born startup. Highly notable is the fact that Arab Interns was the only team to represent Lebanon at Intel’s Business Challenge MENA 2013 held earlier this year in the UAE! The company has been exceeding its own goals and a Beta version of the platform will be launched by the end of 2013. If dorm room created startups taught us anything is that a 1.26 billion users company (the emblematic Facebook story again) can start just like that… out of a dorm room! Let’s hope Arab Interns is blessed with the same spell that propelled Zuckerberg and his nerdy buddies to billionaire stardom!
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