<p>I understand that the experience of others can only go so far in a specific situation like mine, however, I thought some other stories might add perspective.</p>
<p>Have people found it worth taking internships (particularly in media-related jobs) despite low pay? In some cases these could lead to actual positions, in some cases it seems like the company is attempting to get some cheap labor. The advice of friends has ranged from "Why not try it out?" to "F--- them, get a REAL job." Would anyone care to chime in somewhere in the middle?</p>
<p>If the internship has low pay but will provide you with excellent experience, take it. The opportunity can very well lead to a future internship with higher pay or full-time employment.</p>
<p>Media firms in particular are stingy on intern pay, but a solid internship will help you build your network of industry contacts, gain experience, perhaps land a real job there later, and strengthen your resume.</p>
<p>If you have a choice of internships, a brand name company is probably better, and (obviously) one that appears to have more responsibility and relevence to your field would be the best choice.</p>
<p>One overlooked benefit of an internship is that it may convince you that working in that field isn't what you really want to do. Better to find out sooner vs. later.</p>
<p>Media firms can often be stingy on salaries in general, though that isn't always the case. Once you get to know some people at your internship, discuss what they like and dislike about their job, and try to get an idea of pay ranges if pay is important to you. Try to gauge how quickly people advance, etc.</p>
<p>think of the low pay internship as an investment... what are the potential benefits, how valuable are those to you, and could those be attainable elsewhere?</p>
<p>I agree with sheed30's comment that money is not the way to evaluate internships.</p>
<p>Our son(a compsci major) just finished up this summer's internship, and though the pay($20/hr) was not great the experience was fantastic. From day 1 he was involved with the project development team and learned a lot of new tools in the field he is interested in. He actually was a go-to guy for one of the programiing aspects of the project. As his internship was winding down he got two great letters of recommendation and was approached on full time employment when he graduates next spring.</p>
<p>Here is a link to the project he was working on.</p>
<p>My D spent all summer on an unpaid internship in TV news at CBS. What she's coming away with is worth way more than money. Insight, experience. Met everybody up to the top. Got to see the good and the bad. Now she got a list of names, inside phone numbers and e-mails. Offers to help her get other internships and jobs in other cities. She putWriting samples - the camera men & reporter helped her get stand-up video...every thing she needs for jobs/grad school. </p>
<p>I think every student should do it at least once.</p>
<p>Just get a job. 95% of all internships are overrated and the internships you will get after a year of college involves doing stuff that even an elementary school kid can do--inputting data, running errands, using software for basic stuff. Unless you know how to program in 5 different computer languages or already know the market in and out, chances are, you will probably get an internship with responsibilities like I mentioned.</p>
<p>Yes, he is distorting the frequency with which internships are like this, but he is right: there are many internships which are simply boring, administrative office work. That's not to say there aren't lessons to be learned from those internships since there are correspondingly a lot of jobs that are simply boring, administrative office work. But for a bright kid with high hopes, those kind of internships can be kind of soul crushing. Best thing you can hope for in this case is that the people you work with are decent and you get paid a fair amount of money. My first internship was essentially what kguo7 described, but it payed fairly well so it worked for me. For what it's worth, almost every undergraduate law internship is simply office work...</p>
<p>I have several friend who were able to find much more rewarding internships. One is currently working as a programming intern for Google. The work is challenging, fun, rewarding, and serious. He loves his team and wishes that he could stay in Mountainview for at least a couple more months. The other is working for Bose in Boston tinkering around with that small home theater system they advertise all over the place. Both have learned a tremendous amount and were compensated extremely well. </p>
<p>Unpaid internships are something that I would consider if the experience was very rewarding. However, paying for an internship is quite possibly the stupidest idea I've ever heard.</p>
<p>I've gone a bit off course, but my point is that internships can be worth it and can pay very well if you manage to land a good one. The amount of legwork that you put into finding an internship will be rewarded so spend a fair amount of time doing so!</p>
<p>You guys are over estimating the importance of the "learning relevant experience" factor of the first internship. </p>
<p>First off, in order to get better internships and to increase your chance of getting a good job, you need to do bad internships to load your resume. If you've only folded clothes your whole life, a prospective employers has no ability to guage your ability to work in an office environment, and doesnt know if you'll hate it and quit in 2 weeks. </p>
<p>ESPECIALLY in Media the connections and prior internships aren't only important, but they are one of the most important factors in getting future employment. </p>
<p>Matistotle is right. Everyone here is underestimating how difficult it is to find a 'rewarding internship experience.' In my experience, all the 'cool' internships where you do interesting work and meet interesting contacts go to people who already have some experience under their belt. You can't just get good grades for two years and then expect to intern at google or microsoft or wherever. You have to build up your resume with crappy internships where the main job is 'data entry' or some variant. These internships are by no means fun but they're not 'soul crushing.' For whatever reason, boring, low paying, borderline exploitive internships are part of the game, so go do one.</p>
<p>I agree with you. I didn't say that it is easy to find a rewarding internship and I agree that any experience will help--notice how I said that my first internship was boring office work. Even though I wanted to be elsewhere, I knew that it would help me later.</p>
<p>For what it's worth though, the two people I mentioned in my last post both had never worked a real job or had internships prior to this summer. They had other things on their resumes. One had excellent grades and went to a little-know but well respected school. The other (Google) has a < 2.8 GPA and goes to a big state university--and before anyone says anything he has no connections to Google. They both had other things on their resumes like well respected awards and both has excellent portfolios of work done for school--code and engineering projects. The point is that if you are able to demonstrate that you have good skills there is no need to do a resign yourself to having a boring/bad internship your first year. Sure those are better than doing nothing, but if you work hard it's possible to land a good internship the first time around.</p>
<p>I do not totally agree with mattistotle because he makes to broad a generalization. There are other factors which would lead companies to hire interns for high level internship positions. Our son got his internship this summer because of undergrad research he has been involved in since soph year and a regional competition in which his team took first prize. The fact that he spent the previous summer working with one of his profs on an OS development project gratis probably helped a lot too.</p>
<p>In fact he was fortunate that the competition results came after he had emailed his resume for the internship. In his phone interviews he was able to have relative lengthy discussions about the game development project-ie story development, graphic streaming issues, time complexity factors, programming/algorithm tools utilized, etc.</p>
<p>As a result, he was assigned relatively high level development assignments from day 1 and the last few days of his internship he was actually training a full time employee on the portion of the project he was assigned toward the end of his stint(something called scripting).</p>
<p>It was a really tremendous internship experience for him and one he got with no other internship experience on the resume.</p>
<p>it depends what kind of internship you're doing. many people doing programming, computers, or in the technical area usually find their internships rewarding. people nowadays value technology, so even if the person isn't learning much, they're still getting paid a lot. and their experience would be different than a person working for a radio station. </p>
<p>personally, i think being an intern for a smaller company is better than working for a bigger company, even if their name is more known. i used to work for a radio station, where people's eyes would spark and get really excited when i tell them i'm working there. but all i ever did was file, copy and paste things on the computer, and browse the web. they have even told me to just surf the web before. everybody was too busy with their own work. i had to go to them for work... not the other way around. i did get paid here, but i felt a little cheated since i didn't learn anything. </p>
<p>now i'm at a small publishing firm. nobody has heard of them, but they've been around for 18 years. lots of rich experience they have. they only have 5 real employers, and really only 3 people who come in on a daily basis. but they get lots of interns. since they're so small, i get to work directly with the editor. it's real close knitted, and i learn a lot from them. i even get office meetings. and they actually give me work that somewhat relates to the title i got. (marketing). the title i got at the radio station was student assistant producer or whatever. titles are crap. anyway, i don't get paid at my current internship, but i feel like i work there since it's so small and up close.</p>