<p>Right now undergraduates are applying for summer 2015 internships at various companies. I was flummoxed when one of Lake Jr.'s classmates reported how his own application was immediately rejected because the kid did not own a car or have access to "reliable transportation" to be utilized for the 12-month engineering internship. What?</p>
<p>Do major corporations (and this is a huge American corporation with operations in many states and overseas, by the way) expect every 19 and 20-year old to own a car and pay for insurance PRIOR to getting a summer job? The internship in question was at the corporate HQ, which is a significant mid-sized city in the mid-Atlantic region. Do they consider interns whom use public transit to commute undesirable? Apparently so and very unfair, in my opinion. The transportation question was prominent on the online application for the internship; the question required an answer. You couldn't leave it blank.</p>
<p>As a parent, I find this policy misguided. Other companies provide shuttle transportation for interns who do not drive, particularly when a group of interns live together in company-sponsored housing. Why can't this Fortune 400 company extend opportunity to young people who do not own a car?</p>
<p>If you have no transport, then you have to apply to companies that do have transport.
For the other companies, they must have had problems with this so they make sure to ask.
For me, I borrowed a car from my parents for summer jobs.
If public transportation was available, why wouldn’t they say they had access to reliable transportation?</p>
<p>Perhaps they’ve found interns without access to reliable transportation to be unreliable. The demand for such spots is high, so they don’t have to make allowances.</p>
<p>Maybe it was in a place where there just isn’t much public transportation and they just don’t want to offer a shuttle. Or maybe they wanted to give a “nice” reason, as in they just didn’t like him for this and that but wanted to say something that felt nicer (because this is not a character flaw).</p>
<p>True. It’s clear that they want kids who can drive themselves to the job. Still strikes me as curious when there is a fairly busy regional transit system serving this area. At least one route serves the company’s offices. Well, we are in a day and age of limited jobs and numerous applicants, so the companies can dictate the perks and obligations unilaterally.</p>
<p>It does seem possibly self-defeating for the company, but the internship is for their benefit, not to help young people realize their potential. It sounds like they’ve decided (possibly from experience) that they need to hire their interns from a group that has access to their own transportation. If that works out ok for the company, who’s to say they’re out-of-line?</p>
<p>That said, I’m a little surprised by it. Anyone else know of other places that have that requirement?<br>
edit: Just re-read and noted that its a one-year internship. That’s more of a work-study situation than an internship, IMO. You’d think there’d be enough pay associated with it to afford some kind of cheap car.</p>
<p>Vlad, Lake Jr.'s roommate said that the question about reliable transportation was part of the online application process. My son has a couple of dozen applications submitted to mostly large companies and he’s never seen such a requirement.</p>
<p>What company was this? Was the question for specific jobs that may require local or regional travel where public transportation may not be sufficient, or for all jobs?</p>
<p>That seems like a highly unusual requirement for the general case. Lots of regular employees in lots of companies commute by public transportation.</p>
<p>“Access to reliable transportation” = 'you aren’t going to expect us to send a shuttle for you and you aren’t going to be late every day with some transportation-related excuse." Not “you currently own your own car.”</p>
<p>When my D interned at her Fortune 100 company, she was expected to have a car (or access to one) even though she lived in a city with excellent mass transit options. In her case, the internship included travel to client sites that were not so accessible by mass transit, so every intern needed a car to accommodate such travel.</p>
<p>In her case, in her internship, mass transit was definitely not enough. </p>
<p>@1or2Musicians; sure, this is not an uncommon question on applications for full-time, regular permanent employment jobs. I was surprised to hear that it was a requirement for undergraduate internships. Even more surprising because the location is not a remote or rural area. Like Dadx, I believe the policy is a bit short-sighted. But obviously the company believes this policy best suits its own interests.</p>
<p>By the way, the roommate/applicant could not truthfully say yes, despite the availability of public transit, because he neither has a license nor owns a car…circumstances which were explicitly asked about on the application, I am told. Had to be truthful. He’s just plain out of luck with this particular company.</p>
<p>If I saw that question, I would also think that having access to public transportation would be enough to answer ‘yes’, but then again I live in a city where most/many people don’t have cars.</p>
<p>Scout, was she expected to OWN a car? For example, I don’t own a car, but I could rent one pretty much 24/7 within an hour’s notice or less, depending on the time of day - would that have been enough for them?</p>
<p>acollegestudent - car ownership was not required, but it was necessary to have a valid driver’s license and access to a car (renting a car would have worked, too). In our case, we just let her borrow our beat-up second car for the summer.</p>
<p>Insurance is an odd one to me. Giving myself as an example again - have driver’s license; have access to auto; however, I obviously don’t buy insurance, since I don’t own the car. My credit card covers damage to the vehicle, and I supplement it with liability insurance for any other vehicles involved. I don’t understand why they would want someone to actually have a policy - if you rent, it doesn’t make sense.</p>
<p>There is always requirements on the side of the applicant and the side of the place that he/she is applying. If these requirements are not in synch then there is no match. Pretty straightforward and applicable to any application situation including the one in OP. Usually, applicants do not apply to places where the requirements do not meet there own. Usually places where people can apply for anything (jobs, schools, internships, etc.) state their requirements clearly. Only applicant knows his/her own requirements and how well they match to the place’s requirements. Just do not apply where they do not match. The requirement may be something else, like recommendations (not everybody can obtain them and this requirement may look unreasonable for some), like requirement of the 4 year degree which is apparently has absolutely nothing to do with the specific job position and looks extremely unreasonable to any applicant who (as an example) might have huge amount of experience bu do not possess such a degree. There is no point in trying to change a policy when there are plenty of places that one can apply and get in. At least this palce had a decency to point out to the reason, many many others will simply reject without any explanation or simply ignore and leave you in a limbo (but they would be protected from any claim of unfairness, you simply would not know what has happened to your application). </p>
<p>I think that since there is a specific request for evidence of driver’s license, car, and car insurance, then there is some specific reason why the intern needs to provide his/her own transportation for this job. Perhaps the position is not at the main location that has good public transportation access, or requires between work sites that don’t all have good public transportation, and/or a work schedule that doesn’t coordinate well with public transportation.</p>