Internships - Ngā kaupapa tauira

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade offers internships during the summer period in New Zealand from November to February.

On this page

Applications have closed for our Aorere, Vaka and Horizon internship programmes. To stay up to date when the next recruitment round opens, or to see other opportunities to work at MFAT, check out the opportunities on our main Careers page(external link).

Our application process:

Recruitment for our intern programmes is a 2-step process:

1. Applications

  • We recommend that you keep your candidate profile up-to-date via our careers website. Your profile also provides the option to subscribe/ unsubscribe to our Job Alerts which sends you messages to let you know about new vacancies that match your outlined criteria and includes current Graduate or Intern recruitment.

2. Online Interviews

  • Those selected will be invited to complete a competency based interview via Zoom. This is where it gets exciting, we want to know more about you, what you like to do outside of university and why you want to join MFAT! 

If you’re offered an internship, we will complete a reference and Ministry of Justice check and then send your formal offer via email.

Accessibility

If you need a hand with some of the assessment components above, please let us know - we're here to help – mā mātou koe e āwhina! Email us at internships@mfat.govt.nz

Got any questions?

If you have any further questions, please feel free to email us at internships@mfat.govt.nz

Other internships

We have other opportunities for people to join areas of our Ministry as interns:

Internships at posts

At times, MFAT will offer internships for New Zealand students at an overseas post such as Geneva or New York. The opportunities are advertised by the post in the respective country offering the opportunity. These internships will be advertised on our vacancies page.

Good luck! 

My internship was incredibly valuable and set me up to come back through MFAT’s Foundations Programme.

Former MFAT intern — Claudia Prasad.

Intern Sarafina Tipene talks about her internship at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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