<p>Help the college student in your life understand the importance of an internship not only for experience but how it can greatly increase their ability to get hired. </p>
<p>I’m sure your familiar with the saying “It’s not what you know but who you know.” Students who participate in an internship get this live this out first hand. It’s an opportunity for them to get to know people on the inside of a company they would like to work for and build strong relationships that can turn into a full time position. </p>
<p>2 million students on average graduate from college each year. Add that to the millions of recently graduated still looking for work much less those that have been laid off and it’s not hard to see future graduates must do everything possible to make themselves stand out from the crowd to get hired. </p>
<p>According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), almost 50% of employers surveyed would like to see an internship on a student’s resume. </p>
<p>NACE also did a survey which showed that nearly 36% of employers hired employees from their own internship program while some companies may convert as much as 50% of their interns into full time employees.</p>
<p>Another benefit to an internship is it gives the student the opportunity to try a particular job/career on for size to make sure it’s the right fit. It also looks great on their resume. </p>
<p>The Key: they must treat applying for an internship just as they would a real full time position. This includes putting together a cover letter and resume. </p>
<p>Without getting into the weeds to much I want to share one piece of advice for you to share with your college student…have them use the internship job posting when putting together their resume! Most companies are using computers to screen out resumes before they even get to a person. The computer is looking for “key words” in a resume and the more there are in the resume, the greater their chance of getting an interview. Key words are those words used in the posting of the position that describe the type of experience, skills, abilities they are looking for in a candidate. They will need to include as many as possible in their resume and cover letter using the exact word or words listed in the posting. </p>
<p>I will go into more detail on helping your college student have a resume that gets them an interview in another posting but for now just start talking with your son or daughter about looking for internships. It can make all the difference. </p>
<p>While this appears to be common sense, not all internships are equal. There are job applicants that are HURT by having a resume filled with UNPAID internships that are not directly related to the sought career. </p>
<p>Fwiw, it is a complete disgrace that the government has yet to intervene to curb the blatant abusive practices used by employers in disguising jobs as internships or contract labor at a later stage. Policing the employers should be a cinch, but as far as the public servants go, students and recent graduates do NOT matter in the least. </p>
<p>I think internships can be a huge opportunity or a waste of the students time. I think it depends on the opportunity. </p>
<p>An article in The Atlantic last year details some of the NACE data quite nicely. According to the survey if you can get a paid internship then your odds of landing a job is 63%. If you do an unpaid internship then your odds of landing a job are the same as if you never did an internship at all.</p>
<p>I leisurely Google search will reveal the many internship horror stories. Gruelingly long hours, menial tasks, horrible working conditions and some who have even died from being overworked. </p>
<p>I don’t want to paint this issue with a single brushstroke. I think some internships can be excellent opportunities. The intern can see if they might actually like the line of work they aspire to and the employer can see if an intern would make a good future hire upon graduation. </p>
<p>However I think unpaid internships should be against the law. Too often they’ve amounted to slave labor. After all, if you’re not paying someone, why should you respect their time? This has led to abuse.</p>
<p>Being in a hiring position I’ve interviewed too many college graduates to count over the years. I’ve noticed that the vast majority of explanations of internships completed by graduates have left me unimpressed. I’ve tended to be more impressed with the person who worked while in school. Now there’s a person who has proven they can manage their time.</p>
Not too likely since the government does this themselves. My D did an internship this summer with the Department of State in DC that was unpaid. However, that is her career goal and so the experience and contacts are quite valuable for her for when she finishes her Masters. I should also say that the people she worked with were very accommodating with regards to making sure she maximized her time in DC and with the department. They strongly encouraged her to take time during the day every now and then to visit embassies and other locations that were related to the Department, and sometimes just going to museums when there wasn’t anything else urgent happening at the time. In other words, they were very aware that she was an unpaid intern and not an unpaid employee.</p>
<p>How do you address this issue when an internship is a graduation requirement? My son’s major requires a 400 hour internship - which he will do next summer. The vast majority of the of the postings I have seen are unpaid and do require that the intern receive college credit. While I hope it will be a valuable experience, I am irked that he will lose the opportunity to earn his typical summer $2400 or so to use for his expenses and I have to pay for a 6 credit class! </p>
<p>My D did not have unpaid internships during the summer, but had a couple during the school year where she would go in for about 4 hours here and there. One was in the Commerce Dept and one with State. She found them valuable for the contacts she made and she learned about those areas of govt. Her other internship was with the EPA and that was paid. She does believe those internships helped her land her permanent job. For her, gaining experience in the business world was helpful.</p>
<p>My understanding is that unpaid internships are only legal if for nonprofit or for credit (coordinated through the college). They can be very valuable, especially in fields with few paid internships - don’t rule them out. </p>
<p>Unpaid internships for management positions, I hope! I know a person at my old College who had an internship at Wal-Mart; one was a paid IT position but I never found out how it went!</p>
<p>My experience with internships is a little different since I majored in Accounting. In this industry, there is a bifurcation – all internships are paid, reasonably well actually (I did not know any interns who were paid less than $20 an hour, but that may be a nonrepresentative sample! However, even the smallest firms paid their interns something and the goal is to treat the intern almost as if they were a first-year associate at the firm). </p>
<p>Externships, on the other hand, are unpaid ‘experiential learning’ type adventures where you visit an office for 1 or 2 days and listen to speakers and learn about the sponsor firm and the industry.</p>
<p>I do recommend both experiences as being extremely valuable. Many internships ended in an interview for a full-time position at the firm and even if they didn’t, as was mentioned above, you at least learn about the work and develop some professional contacts. I myself did two internships and I benefited from both of them even though I ended up signing an offer with a third firm! </p>
<p>That’s crazy! I hate that companies use their leverage to put one over on ordinary folks like that!</p>
<p>I do think that unpaid internships have the effect of inadvertently shutting out the poor from career advancement. If you are in an industry where unpaid internships are mandatory to get into a full time job, you have to be fortunate to come from a family that can support you while you work a full-time job for free. If you are poor, or have to work a full-time job to support yourself or even a family, then squeezing in the time to fit a 9-to-5 might be impossible, even before you take into account the fact that you have to pay the college for credit too!!</p>
<p>I guess Wal-Mart is as successful as they are because of the massive cojones they got. At my undergrad alma mater, you wouldn’t even try to float an unpaid internship. Students would not even look at it because there are so many firms that recruit so many students that it would not even make sense. All of the Big Four, every regional firm, every local firm I have heard of.</p>
<p>I wonder if WM has many takers. The only way that I can see that working is if the other firms only have a few slots and it is either take the WM internship or nothing at all. Either that or the WM is a steady track to a good job at the company.</p>
<p>Intership offerings vary widely by major. My older son majored in computer science and had well paid internships every summer the last of which led directly to permanent employment. Younger son (international relations major) did one unpaid intership as part of a study abroad program, worked for money during his summers, and having graduated in June is now doing an unpaid internship with a non-profit. I think it’s pretty exploitative - but at least he can live at home and they are giving him real work that is directly related to his long term interests. </p>
<p>@Bay - That’s interesting that is a formal policy. It certainly matches up with her experience, as I described. Although when given work tasks to do I think no student would dare say no. Thanks for that additional info.</p>
<p>@colorado_mom - See the link I gave in post #5 which details the rules for unpaid (or by the laws of converse logic, paid) internships. A not-for-profit would not be exempt from these rules. That status has no bearing on the situation, as they are subject to all the same labor laws as for-profit companies.</p>
<p>The link from post #5 is helpful and interesting. </p>
<p>But it starts with this intro…“This fact sheet provides general information to help determine whether interns must be paid the minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act for the services that they provide to “for-profit” private sector employers.” So I am confused now. </p>
<p>My understanding is that people who do unpaid work for not-for-profits are volunteers. They are still covered under FSLA and if they don’t meet the guidelines they get to be counted as employees.</p>