Internships for Autumn 2024 are now open!

Anything you choose to do after your studies will require curiosity, hope, and imagination in the midst of the global challenges we confront. Do you want to work towards bringing positive societal change and tackling these challenges?

Demos Helsinki is now looking for interns to join us for 3-month-long full time paid internships taking place between August 2024 and January 2025. Our team is diverse in terms of thematic expertise and background, and we appreciate diverse points of view also from our interns. Your study background can range from human sciences to business, from political sciences to engineering, from natural sciences to education.

The things that matter the most to us are your motivation towards impact-driven work, your desire to take on the responsibilities that help you grow as a future professional, and your curiosity to extend your skills in analytical and synthetic thinking into doing.

Demos Helsinki

Demos Helsinki is an independent not-for-profit think tank and a community. We want to lead societal transformations for a fair, sustainable and joyful next era. For this purpose, we conduct research and offer consulting services to governments, international organisations, companies, foundations, cities and other partners in Finland and internationally. Our work is guided by our Impact Model. We’ve recently added a fifth leverage, technology, but you can still get a good idea of it from this version. Our teams work on different areas of societal change with a range of diverse impact-driven projects. You can read more about our ongoing and past projects here.

Internship programme for those who can’t separate thinking from doing

Our internship programme has been an essential part of our community for nearly 15 years. Our interns have an important role in both sharing new thinking and perspectives on our existing ways of working, and contributing to our work as team members. Our teams work on different areas of societal change, and within each team there is a range of opportunities to contribute to impactful projects in those respective areas. We have two intern calls each year, the Autumn and the Spring call. The Autumn call is for internships starting between January and April, and the current Spring call for internships starting between August and November.

Some of our interns may also choose to focus a part or all of their time on horizontal responsibilities enabling our work, such as sales, communications and marketing, financial administration, legal matters or human resources.

Based on your experience and goals, you will be able to take part in a manner that matches your interests and capabilities. During your internship you will join one of our teams, have a dedicated mentor to support you getting the most out of your time with us, and fellow interns for that extra peer support. 

Depending on your background, interests, and goals your work could include some or all of the following:

  • Contributing to projects as an active part of the team, e.g., research, analysis, background study, workshops, and participating in client meetings
  • Preparing project proposals
  • Supporting project management
  • Communications & digital marketing tasks
  • Organising events & webinars

Curious to find out what this might feel like? You can meet some of our past interns and learn more about their experiences at Demos Helsinki here

What Demos Helsinki can offer you:

  • A three-month full-time internship in Helsinki, Finland, beginning at any time between August 2024 and November 2024
  • A compensation of 1500€/month plus six days of paid leave during your internship
  • Impact-driven work towards societal transformations in an ambitious organisation
  • A dedicated home team, committed mentoring, and peer support from fellow interns and other colleagues
  • A collaborative, autonomous and low-hierarchy environment that allows you to take steps to grow as a professional and learn by doing

We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive community, a place where we can all be ourselves and feel like we belong. This means, for example, flexible working arrangements for different situations and a physically accessible office space. We treat others with dignity and respect, do not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment and educate ourselves constantly.

Skills you will need:

  • Ability to engage with new information and execute rapidly with it in mind 
  • Humility to acknowledge when you don’t know, and the curiosity to find out 
  • Ability to think in terms of both precise critical analysis and flexible imaginative synthesis
  • Courage to share your perspective within your team and the larger community 
  • Ability to communicate your own needs effectively, and willingness to support others through teamwork

We want to engage with the most profound questions of our time. These questions do not have straightforward answers and often require us to rethink how we work together. Trust and kindness are the bedrock of our community. Together we are Demos Helsinki, and each of us, including our interns, carry the responsibility to support one another, and ask for help when needed.

What we expect from you: 

  • You are able to work in Helsinki for the duration of your internship. We want our interns to get the most out of their time at Demos Helsinki. In our experience the opportunity to work together with your colleagues live is a key element in ensuring this. However, we’ve had several interns who moved to Finland for the internship, and we are able to share some useful tips regarding administrative issues and finding accommodation.
  • You are an undergraduate or graduate student at a university or a university of applied sciences. Our internship program is targeted at future experts still in training. We encourage other candidates to apply for other open positions or leave us an open application. However, if your study programme has restricted you from taking on an internship during your studies, you can also be a recent graduate from the school term that has ended in Spring 2024 or Autumn 2024.
  • You have full professional fluency in English. Our internal working language is English, so an excellent command of spoken and written English is required for the internship. Other language skills, especially Finnish, might be beneficial but are not required. Approximately half of the interns we recruit annually do not speak Finnish. (In case you are curious, in 2023 approximately half of our newly recruited colleagues overall did not speak Finnish.)

Application process

This call for Demos Helsinki’s internship program is open until Monday, 1 April 2024, 23:59 am (GMT+3/EEST). To treat applicants equally, we do not accept late applications. Based on your application, we will select candidates to participate in a workshop including a group assignment on 23 April 2024 9 a.m. – 12. p.m. (GMT+3/EEST). In addition to the workshop, individual interviews will take place 23–26 April. 

When applying, please reserve these dates from your calendar. Ideally, all candidates based in Southern Finland will join us at our office in Helsinki (Mechelininkatu 3d) for the workshop, with a remote participation opportunity reserved to those applicants who would have to travel great distances to take part live. Individual interviews can be done remotely. You will be informed of your individual schedule later on in the process. However, we do encourage you to apply even if you can’t make the workshop or the interview days. 

The application process in the first phase of the intern selection is anonymous. You apply for the internship by completing a preliminary assignment and filling out the application form, but the details that are irrelevant for the preliminary selection (e.g., name, age, and city) are temporarily hidden when we read through the applications. The anonymous application process ensures that the preliminary selection is influenced only by the information that is relevant to the process.

All applicants will be informed whether they are invited to the workshop and interview or not by Friday 12 April 2024. We aim to conclude this recruitment process by Friday 3 May 2024.

Click the link to apply! Please fill in the application form carefully. We appreciate clear and concise answers.

 

If you have any additional questions regarding the internship programme, you may contact Ifeoma Kulmala at +358 50 365 8993 or ifeoma.kulmala@demoshelsinki.fi.