Many language departments have the perception that in order for students to experience language and cultural immersion, they must study abroad. However, locally-based cultural immersion programs represent a way for students to immerse themselves in the target language and culture without traveling abroad. I refer to home-based cultural immersion programs as the placement of students as interns in local companies where they systematically require the use of Spanish language and culture (or any other target language and culture) for conducting everyday business. This chapter focuses on explaining how to set up a platform for locally-based cultural immersion programs, through the internship work that students do in local companies that requires Spanish language usage and that consequently has a Hispanic cultural component. For the purpose of this work, I use the term Hispanic to refer to all Spanish-speaking countries and their peoples and cultures, as I focus on the linguistic communality of all members of this group.

Locally-based internship programs, in addition to providing language-learning opportunities (in this case in Spanish), foster crucial skills demanded by the current job market. Many of these skills are not fully offered through traditional academic courses. Using project-based instruction, internship programs provide students with an opportunity to develop skill sets that are key to improving their employability.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), through their Job Outlook survey (Job Outlook, 2013) identified 19 different attributes that employers seek in recent graduates' resumes. In a later survey (Job Outlook, 2015), the employers were asked to grade and prioritize, in order of importance, those attributes. The survey states that, in addition to looking at a minimum GPA of 3.0 for most career hires, 'employers look at resumes for leadership skills and some evidence of teamwork and written communication skills as the most-important attributes' (Job Outlook, 2015).