In a volatile job market, internships have proven to help recent graduates stand out from the crowd. By tackling projects that have value and relevance for the companies hosting them, students gain skills that employers are looking for while discovering the reality of day-to-day life in the business world. Companies, on the other hand, find fresh ideas and enthusiasm from high-achieving students eager to start their careers.
That’s why, in the last year of RSM’s BSc in International Business Administration and BSc Bedrijfskunde, students have the option of undertaking a fulltime internship for between three and six months.
Feedback from this year’s interns and companies was exceptional, showing that RSM students have the knowledge and skills they need to add tremendous value to the workforce.
Companies were particularly impressed with RSM students’ ability to learn quickly, especially in fast-paced environments. Many interns entered complex, technical, or unfamiliar industries – such as finance, analytics, IT, and audit – and still adapted rapidly. Multinational companies tend to invest a lot of time and energy into helping their people develop skills to succeed in their careers, and RSM students thrived in these environments.
Developing professional-level standards at PwC
Jetze van Essen, for example, carried out his internship at PwC in Rotterdam, where he supported a team in evaluating internal control frameworks and performing walkthroughs of financial processes for various clients. He was most impressed with the “highly professional yet informal culture at PwC”, saying, “There was significant focus on personal guidance and development. This experience allowed me to explore my interests and strengths. It was highly valuable and will benefit me significantly in the next steps of my career.”
Joshua Croes, Senior Associate at PwC Rotterdam, says, “As an intern, Jetze was outstanding. His strong eagerness to learn facilitated the coaching process and this was reflected in the quality of his work over time, which eventually met the standards expected of a PwC entry-level professional.”
Cultivating valuable skills through meaningful projects at Unilever
When interns are given meaningful projects, they can develop skills that set them apart from other early-career job seekers as well as lightening the load for their teams.
Ceylin Gümüş interned in Unilever’s Marketing & Consumer Market Insights (CMI) team. She supported them with data analysis, market research, and competitor benchmarking, which was then incorporated into internal presentations and decision-making processes. Her work will support ongoing marketing and brand-strategy initiatives beyond the internship period. She says, “The internship helped me develop key skills such as analytical thinking, stakeholder communication, and translating data into actionable insights. These capabilities are essential for my future commercial and strategic roles, and the experience gave me clarity on the direction I want to pursue.”
Her supervisor, Safak Tan, CMI Manager at Unilever, was equally pleased, noting that “she grew remarkably in her ability to take ownership, eventually coordinating parts of the process independently. She consistently delivered high-quality work and showed strong potential for a future career in consumer insights or marketing analytics.”
Exploring future Master’s and career options at Ernst & Young
From the students’ side, internships provide an opportunity to test their own assumptions about the right career path or postgraduate education for them.
Winston Yang, who interned in Ernst & Young’s Assurance Department, discovered that working on the company’s current projects helped him find his chosen field. His audit testing and documentation were reviewed by staff and senior team members and incorporated into final audit files. “The internship confirmed my interest in audit and assurance,” he says, “because it strengthened my technical accounting knowledge and showed me the impact of audit on financial transparency and trust.”
His company coach explains the skills that helped Winston stand out: “Winston actively joined different teams across multiple client engagements. He was proactive, curious, and eager to understand tasks thoroughly, always asking thoughtful questions. He engaged well with colleagues and was well-liked for his friendly and collaborative attitude. Overall, he demonstrated strong learning motivation and quickly adapted to the professional audit environment.”
Encountering the world beyond the workplace at KPMG
Internships don’t just give students a chance to learn about a company’s work culture or whether a specific field is right for them. Real-world projects expose students to real-world challenges and solutions.
One student, Yara van der Ende, joined the Special Assurance Services (SAS) Department at KPMG, a team within KPMG Business Assurance that focuses on auditing subsidy accountability reports. Its clients include universities, research institutions, healthcare organisations, social organisations, small- and medium-sized businesses, and subsidy providers. These clients are often legally or contractually required to provide assurance to third parties about how they’re using subsidies. One of the reports Yara worked on, for example, was for a project focusing on hospitality education across the Caribbean.
She says, “The subsidies I came across were mostly from public funds, so one of the most impressive aspects of this internship was seeing what the government is doing with our money, and that a lot of good things are done with public funds. What surprised me was the number of rules and regulations organisations must follow to do a project in the first place.
“It’s an area we’re less likely to think of when talking about the audit industry, but it’s a really important one where mistakes can have very big consequences.”
Yara’s supervisor, Peter Otterspeer, Senior Manager Audit at KPMG, was very impressed with her work. “She collaborated easily with her colleagues and integrated smoothly into the team,” he says. “We were very satisfied with Yara’s contributions and, as a result, continued working with her in the role of student employee.”
Taking the lead on product innovation at Philips
Skills students learn in RSM’s classrooms set them apart in the workforce, a difference that’s noticeable to employers from day one.
Bessi Beca, Global Consumer Marketing Manager Beauty at Philips, notes about intern Ilona: “Ilona has been a strong performer from the very start. She is a quick and independent learner with an excellent work attitude, always keen to understand the bigger picture behind her tasks. From the beginning, we aligned clear goals, and she consistently demonstrated a desire to take ownership and deliver high-quality work.
“She has been deeply involved in new product innovation projects, where she was even given the lead on certain tracks, managing stakeholders confidently and staying fully on top of her responsibilities. Her proactive approach and ability to learn rapidly have made her one of our higher-performing interns this cycle.”
Demonstrating the value of communication skills at ING
For managers already juggling multiple urgent priorities, reliable interns who complete their tasks to the highest standards are invaluable. But soft skills, such as understanding when and how to approach people, make all the difference in the modern workforce. These are some of the skills companies appreciate most about RSM students.
Oeranoes Sarwari, Planning & Communication Expert at ING, highlights how and why these skills are so important: “[Our intern] Valeriia understands things very fast, can work together and alone, is not scared to catch-up with people, loves to talk and delivers good quality work. I can hand over tasks without worrying.”
Career services for students
The RSM Career Centre works throughout the year to create opportunities for students to find internships. The centre organises on-campus events, speed interview sessions, career fairs, and in-house days with companies such as Rituals, Danone, and Unilever. These events are in addition to the regular support and resources that all RSM students can take advantage of, including 1:1 coaching sessions, weekly workshops on a variety of job-related topics, and the RSM Career portal with over 40,000 vacancies.
Find out more about the RSM Career Centre
Top 20 companies hosting RSM interns in 2025
These were the companies that hosted the most interns, with the number of interns in brackets:
- Philips (6)
- Unilever (6)
- PWC (5)
- EY (5)
- Danone (4)
- Deloitte (4)
- ABN Amro (3)
- Bol.com (3)
- Coty Inc. (3)
- Heineken (3)
- Hunkemoller (3)
- ING (3)
- KPMG (3)
- KraftHeinz (3)
- Under Armour (3)
- Quooker (3)
- ASML (2)
- Rituals (2)
- West Coast Supply Group (2)
- Housing Anywhere (2)
