Learn and hire through Summerpreneurship in Geneva and Zurich

Startups are often laden with the task of finding new members to complete their team. This issue, however, is no longer a major challenge, thanks to Summerpreneurship organised by Impact Hub Zurich in collaboration with the ETH Zurich, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Emil & Rosa Richterich-Beck foundation and the ETH Entrepreneurs Club.

Summerpreneurship is a mix between a summer school and internship for the students, and a management learning journey for the startups. The objective is to instil an entrepreneurial, innovative & future-oriented mindset among students and to develop the startups’ HR and leadership skills. The Academy runs from June to August. During the 14 weeks, the organising team from Impact Hub strives to create a stimulating learning environment to foster learning through tailored workshops for students. Last year, 40 students and 31 startups from both Zurich and Geneva participated in the 4^th edition of the program.

HR training for startups
During Summerpreneurship, entrepreneurs will get valuable support to bring their ventures to the next level. At the same time, the program offers a lean and effective HR training about the essentials of hiring from a startup perspective. Scoping, screening, legal aspects and interviewing (training offered in collaboration with IBM) are some of the topics covered. In addition, startups will get access to a large pool of pre-selected, talented students and find their top-notch intern. The initial hiring process, which includes searching and the pre-selection of candidates will be covered by the team from Impact Hub. Last year, 27 of the participating startups in Zurich & Geneva were successful at hiring interns. The startups include: 2324.ch, Adaptricity, Boonea, Catalyx, Climanosco, CO2 Monitor, CVCube, engageability, Flowminder, Green Network, Natural Sleep, Oolux, Rapyuta Robotics, Skope, Smart-in, Sport Components, Synacts, The Green Fairy, Toilet Board Coalition, TRACKTICS, UpCouture, WeAct, Wealthport, Wildbiene + Partner and Workspace2go.

Eligible to apply for the workshop are impact-driven or purpose-driven startups less than 5 years old and operating in Switzerland.

Summer Academy for students
Designed for students, the Summerpreneurship Academy aims to complement the internship over summer. Participating students will get support from Impact Hub as they acquire new skills and get insights into the startup world.

“I made lifelong friends, learned that profit and purpose are not at odds and experienced for the first time what the future of work looks like”, comments Pere Molins, former Summerpreneur, now working at Impact Enterprises, in a blog.

The program has created an impact on the participating students such as that vast majority of them consider becoming entrepreneurs themselves, want to join a startup or want to work in the innovation field. “Summerpreneurship boosted my self-development. Through insights into various fields thinking/improving soft skills, all the workshops helped me to explore myself further as well as my skills. It fostered my self-confidence and my creative thinking, which was a great complementary programme to my internship.” Comment by a student in 2016 Summerpreneurship program.

The application window for startups closes on 19^th February at midnight. Student can apply from February 27 until March 31, midnight.