We just opened 5 FREE seats for a Strategic Partnerships Intern.
• FREE = costs you nothing, pays you in skills, tools, portfolio – and commission.
Most people don't even know strategic partnerships is a career.
They graduate. They look at "sales" or "marketing" or "consulting." Because that's what they know exists.
Nobody tells them about partnerships.
The work where every deal is different. Where creativity beats scripts. Where you build long-term relationships, not transactional wins.
The work AI won't take.
Here's why partnerships matter in 2025:
AI is coming for transactional sales. Cold outreach? Automated. Product demos? AI can do it. Closing standard deals? Give it 3 years.
But partnerships? Too creative. Too multi-format. Too human.
Every partnership is unique. Different stakeholders. Different value exchange. Different implementation. There's no playbook you can hand to AI and say "do this 1,000 times."
Which means: while everyone else worries about AI taking their job, you'll have a skill it can't replace.
So we asked ourselves:
What if we trained people in a profession most don't even know exists?
Not sales. Not marketing. Not "a little bit of both."
But strategic partnerships. The real kind.
We run 9 types of partnerships:
Events – Joint events, co-hosting, speaker exchanges
Integrations – Technical integrations with complementary products
Educators – Training providers, course creators, educational institutions
Co-Sell – Selling together with partners to shared customers
Communities – Community partnerships, access to engaged audiences
Advisors – Strategic advisors who open doors and provide guidance
Affiliates – Performance-based referral partnerships
Influencers – Industry voices who amplify our message
Marketplaces – Listing and distribution partnerships
Link Building – SEO partnerships for mutual backlink value
Each one is a different game. Different partners. Different value propositions. Different implementation strategies.
You won't master all 9 in 6 months. But you'll learn the system. You'll own 2-3 types deeply. You'll understand how partnership thinking works across all of them.
And you'll take them from first contact all the way to implementation. The full cycle.
→ Weeks 1-2: You're learning all 9 partnership types, understanding how each works, getting onboarded
→ Weeks 3-4: Trial period – you're testing 1-2 partnership types with real partners, we're both deciding if this fits
→ Months 2-6: You're owning multiple partnership types, taking them from first contact to implementation, building systems that work
What you'll actually do:
Prioritize potential partnerships based on strategic value (not every company should be a partner)
Build relationships and establish genuine connection with people (partnerships are human-first)
Find the mutual value and the right partnership format (what works for both sides)
Document partnerships and moderate the process across stakeholders to implementation (coordinate, don't micromanage)
Who Should Apply:
Recent graduates in Communications, Marketing, or Business. This works best with deep immersion - the more hours you put in, the faster you'll learn and ship. Some interns do 15-20 hours/week, others go full-time (40 hours/week). Full-time means you build more, learn faster, and see stronger results in 6 months.
Fair warning:
This isn't for everyone.
If you're not willing to spend 2 weeks learning before you start contributing → This requires deep understanding of each partnership type first
If you want a predictable playbook → Every partnership is different, there's no script
If you like quick transactional wins → Partnerships are long-term, complex, relationship-based
If you can't juggle multiple contexts → You'll be working across different partnership types simultaneously
But if you recently graduated, want to learn a career path most don't know exists, get excited by creative problem-solving where every partnership is a unique puzzle, enjoy building relationships, not just closing deals, and want work that's too creative and human for AI to replace – we should talk.
Because here's what we believe:
0% of valuable partnerships come from scripts.
0% of great partnership professionals learned by doing just one piece of the cycle.
100% of strategic partnership skills come from taking deals from research to results.
What happens after 6 months?
You complete the internship program and join our alumni network.
Top performers get considered for our Partnership Manager position (paid, equity, real role).
Either way, you leave with:
• Experience in strategic partnerships (a career most people don't discover until years into sales)
• A working system across 9 partnership types (breadth few professionals ever get)
• A portfolio of partnerships you built from scratch
• Skills AI won't replace
The best partnerships don't feel like deals, they feel like collaboration.
Ready to learn a career you didn't know existed?
Apply: Record a 1-minute video (phone quality is fine) explaining:
• What excites you about strategic partnerships? (even if you just learned this career exists)
• Pick one of our 9 partnership types and explain why that model makes sense
• Why you, why now, why this internship?
• Send your video with the application: https://app.dover.com/apply/Unstuck%20Engine/2cb2a6f3-b9da-4f46-b7e8-020d4784fd90?rs=42706078
(And if this feels too complex or ambiguous for you? That's okay. Better we both know now.)
P.S. — Still reading? Good. Go explore our 9 partnership types. Pick one. Understand why it works. Then record that video. We want people who can think strategically about partnerships, not just follow a sales playbook.
