In the middle of December, Chris Turney found his perfect co-op.

“I was struggling to find something I was interested in, and stumbled upon a job posting about a bank in France, and I thought that was really cool,” said Turney, a third-year finance and entrepreneurship major with a minor in economics in Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration. “It really got me thinking about going abroad for co-op.”

In short order, Turney interviewed with a hiring manager for IBM in Bangalore, India. A few days later, he headed to Bangalore, where he worked for six months in the business operations division of IBM’s Global Process Services, the world’s largest business and technology services provider.

As Turney put it, “Business is really coming up in India and I thought that working there would be a really great experience.”

At IBM, Turney gathered monthly progress reports from departments across the company, designed a new rate card template for outside vendors and service providers and wrote and edited content for IBM’s employee newsletter.

He quickly adapted to slower pace of office life in India, which he compared to the congested roads he took to work each day. “It definitely made me a lot more confident in my people-management skills, which will certainly be valuable in future jobs,” he said.

Turney’s co-op in India has convinced him to pursue another international experiential learning opportunity.

“I definitely want another international experience,” he said. “Maybe somewhere in South America or Europe, where I can be a part of something really interesting happening in some part of the world I’ve never been to before.”