"I was a trainee in Caracas, beginning in the sales promotion division of Shell Oil. After a few weeks there, I was sent to various Shell branches throughout Venezuela to study sales techniques. The company paid my travel expenses, of course."

Such was the experience of one of a group of Harvard students returning this Fall from summer traineeships abroad. The students, who worked in Nigeria and Venezuela as well as in Western Europe, received their jobs through the local Harvard chapter of an international business exchange program, AIESEC (Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commercials).

Summer jobs gained through AIESEC are designed to provide practical experience in business for students who have had some theoretical training in economics or commerce. The nature of the jobs varies widely. Although some jobs are no more than clerical work in a foreign language, many provide an over-all glimpse of one company's entire operations.

Versatile

One Harvard junior received exactly this sort of over-all picture. Working for Europe's largest manufacturer of foundation garments he was taken from department to department studied the profitability of specific brassiere models and participated in a research survey of the European bra market.

Other AIESEC jobs provide practical experience in a student's specialty. One junior worked for the Swiss Bank Corporation in Zurich, where he spent the entire summer in the office of financial advice, counselling clients on the desirability of specific stock purchases. Similarly, an economics major did financial research for a small mutual funds firm in Lille, France. At the end of his traineeship he prepared a 40-page report on the prospects for investment in one of France's major steel companies.

AIESEC traineeships in Africa have the particular advantage of offering a general look at business in an entire country. For instance, one senior who worked for the United Africa Company made an on-the-spot survey of advertising media throughout Nigeria.

A students on an AIESEC traineeship receives a salary sufficient to cover his local living expenses but each trainee must pay for his own transportation to the foreign country.

The Harvard students going abroad this summer were able to choose their country of work from a list of 38 participating countries. Besides all of Western Europe, AIESEC operates in Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Japan, Korea and most of South America. The Secretary-General of the organization is presently negotiating to arrange traineeships in Poland. An international engineering program has already sent several students to Polish state 'firms'.

Europeans Dominate

The international secretariat of AIESEC is located in Geneva. Although the United States has played an important role in AIESEC since 1954, the program continues to be dominated by the countries of Western Europe, where it was founded in 1948.

At that time only France, Germany, Sweden and Great Britain were participants, but the program quickly expanded to the rest of Europe and finally to the United States in 1954.

Over 4,000 traineeships were exchanged between the 38 countries during the past year.

The exchange procedure is complicated. The basis of the exchange is a one-for-one trade between countries. The largest part of the trading is done at the annual AIESEC international congress which was held in Princeton this past March.

Over 250 delegates from the participating countries made trades in 703 different combinations bargaining over salaries, reception programs, and the quality of the trainees.