I have been looking through ads to help my son and there are so many intern ads and so many experienced ads but very little New grad ads. I wondered why a new grad cannot apply for an intern job and I believe this is the answer. Companies must get some federal funding or tax benefit for these programs done separately as described in this link if anyone else has wondered about this as well.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/hiring-authorities/students-recent-graduates/#url=Overview
New grads can apply for internships but it is up to the employer’s restrictions. The page you linked is the policy specifically for jobs with the government. I interned as a somewhat recent grad as I chose to switch industries. I signed on as a full-time contractor before receiving a full-time salaried position.
Most internship applications are strict because HR is allocated a certain amount of their budget towards interns. An experienced or recent grad would likely have higher pay expectations. Additionally, a lot of companies limit the application process to students specifically for their lack of experience to ensure a learning experience that will hopefully be insightful and encourage the candidate to remain as a full-time employee if they perform well. It allows the employer to see progression more clearly particularly amongst larger applicant pools.
I understand what you are saying but it doesn’t exactly make sense to have an intern work for you one summer and for an employer to wait another 9 months and expect those interns to come back. Some will and some won’t, everyone’s lives can not be planned to far in the future.
It sort of makes more sense for new grads to intern for the summer with no commitment on the company’s part to hire them as a 3 month trial. Come Sept, the company can let the summer hire go with no risk or hire them to continue. The pay scale for interim or contract work ranges greatly so salary for 3 months isn’t it.
I have only been looking at engineering ads and many of those companies are very strict the student must be an undergrad to intern and I know many of those companies work on projects that are federally funded. In order to get federal funds they must have drug screening and security clearance even though the student is only there for 3 months.
So I tend to think it is just easier for companies to follow the federal guidelines overall rather than have to be concerned a student might work on something that connects to a federal project.
Federal internships are a different beast given the policies surrounding them, but of course an employer wants to minimize the risk of attrition. In the private sector, the problem is that when it comes to competition for top candidates (not just all students), those students want to have full-time offers ASAP which typically is during their senior year so that they aren’t scrambling once they are already out of school. There is a huge supply of candidates but all of those candidates are not equal. It benefits employers to lock down their employment contracts as soon as possible since the demand for top candidates is extremely high.
Most of my classmates who were unable to receive full-time offers after their Junior internships ended up interning their Senior summer and receiving offers following those 3 months as you mentioned but it’s a plan B and not an ideal situation. For the employer it also creates inconsistencies in training and evaluation when you have a large wave of full-time recruits coming in during June, while a new wave of interns from the same graduating class are beginning their internships. Top employers don’t really need to consistently fill headcount since there is consistent demand, the recruitment and internship process allows them to find filter promising candidates, so they will focus their internship recruitment efforts when the top candidates are searching which is during their Junior summer.
Thanks, good info :). My son is one of those seniors looking for work. He was unable to do a Jr. summer internship as he was doing a study abroad and came back too late.
There are many summer internships that he would be willing to do because he missed Jr. Summer even if the employment was only for 3 months but it is not clear from the ads if they will even accept a new grad for those internships.
So in your experience then your Senior friends did fill some of those summer internships?
Completely anecdotal, but most of my friends that did receive Senior summer internships did receive offers beginning in the fall. The difficulty is that the supply of internship postings drops significantly as headcount amongst employers declines as offers go out during the school year. I myself went through the process of interning over senior summer and it definitely becomes a much more proactive process for the applicant as employers stop active recruitment.
I saw many internship postings specifically listing current students but I often applied anyway. Often times, most of those postings are limited to students because they do not want to pay interns and instead offer academic credit as a workaround. It’s difficult to workaround these types of postings but there are a ton of internships that do pay and those are the ones that your son should apply to regardless of whether they state they are only considering current students.
Given a qualified resume, his behavioral interview will undoubtedly bring up his current state of employment and what he does with his time so he should definitely be able to answer that with a productive response.
Great answer, Big help. I’ll let him know your thoughts.
One other thing to consider is that companies offer internships for rising seniors knowing full well that they won’t all come back, even if they are all given offers. It is just as important for employees to be satisfied with the company as it is for the company to be satisfied with the employees. If you do an internship for three months at an investment bank and learn that you don’t want to be an i-banker anymore, then when it is over, you can shift gears; from the company’s perspective, they don’t need to give you health insurance or a retirement plan, and they don’t need to wait for you to secure another job for you to leave while you are submitting below average work.
Further, the big companies offering internships know that they will lose some interns to other companies but will take other interns for their own class. It works for them.
Companies that cannot wait around for nine months for people who accepted offers to start will not offer internships at all. If they don’t have the infrastructure in place to withstand drops in entry level headcount, then internship programs don’t make sense for them. If they were to offer an “internship” to a graduate, if there was any chance they could get hired on full time, they would have to enroll them in benefits programs as if they were a full time employee - for legal purposes, there is no distinction between an intern and a new hire except that a typical intern is a temporary employee who will have fewer than 120 days (~6 months) of service for the year.
In the end, a lot of companies offer pseudo internships - your first 60 working days (or 90 total days) are a probationary period where your performance and development is closely monitored, making termination easier, but you are still a full time employee, meaning you get benefits and you are expected to continue on after the initial period.
I agree with you. That is a good point that companies who won’t take the chance to wait, won’t offer internships at all.
The problem is trying to search for entry level/new grad jobs produces a lot of hits that actually want more experience. It is so time consuming to go through them which is why I am helping him look. .
Internships at my company provide no benefits, no 401K matching and no commitment. Our fiscal year starts in October, so summer interns are a great way to spend excess money that people have been hoarding all year. Try before you buy.
I think a new grad is hired as an intern, we would still be required to provide benefits.
That’s a point about having excess money to spend. The thing is, I see ads all the time for contract or temps. They are “employment at will” assignments. They still have to cover everyone if they are injured at work either thru Workers comp or liability insur. so how is an intern different than a temp/contract?
I don’t believe there are any technical differences between an intern and a temp/contractor, the tax filings are the same.
company pays intern’s wages and thus company portion of SS and medicare tax. Contractor pays self-employment tax (basically what the company would otherwise pay).
Contract jobs aren’t terrible, but they’re generally not great for entry-level. Pretty much every job is going to be employment at will. If you are an employee at a company, the company has a vested interest in your advancement; if you’re a contractor, then the company doesn’t care - you’re just a line item in AP. Contract work can be GREAT if you are ready to make a move to another job or industry but need to have some flexibility; it can also be good if you want to be able to work with a different level of people… when I did contract work, since I no longer reported to somebody, it was easier for me to reach out to higher levels at my clients than I had as an employee. In that way, contract work can help you advance your career.
As someone coming out of college, though, you can’t expect training as a contractor… if you don’t already have the skills, you’re not getting the contract. You get that on-the-job training as a new hire or as an intern.
Why isn’t he doing this through his school? He didn’t participate in any job fairs to line up a job? Even as a graduate, he has access to the alumni network website. What kind of engineer? In Silicon Valley, we aren’t usually hiring new Bachelors grads for software development positions. Takes years to teach them what the Masters programs will cover for us. If he is a Petroleum engineer at this point, he is out of options.
Too bad there is not more apprenticeships.
Yep. There are some companies that do have “New Grad” jobs but not all companies who offer internships have them. It is odd though, I’ve looked through a lot of intern ads for my son and I estimate about 10-20 percent will include a new grad if they have graduated in the last year. Very time consuming to find those though. I haven’t figured out why those companies are willing to extend to a new grad versus those that won’t .
It’s possible that some companies have not thought to add that blurb… it might be worth asking if there is a job that is particularly interesting.
Yes, I agree. Those internships that look most interesting he applies to anyway.