Every year around this time you can hear a buzz in the air, a shuffling of papers and feet and even some coffee boiling: it’s students working for free!
Young professionals in college and even as young as high school are looking to work in the corporate world for free to gain the experience they need to succeed. Any experience they get can help them create and define their personal brands until they are ready to get a “real” job.
While not all internships are created equal, any student intern in the end can say that it was a worthwhile experience. Maybe it wasn’t the most exhilarating and action packed internship you dreamed of, but the entire process and journey over the months that you worked there is something that you can deny. So lets go through them:
Found the perfect internship (10 tries later!): You went to every job posting site you could find and sent out your resume and cover letter to countless companies. You wait anxiously like any other job applicant until you hear back finding out they want you to come in for an interview.
Interview time: This is what you have been preparing for your entire life, going face to face with a potential employer. This is where your personal branding pays off. They think they know everything about you but you’re about to blow them away!
Start working: This is where all internships are not created equal, but it doesn’t matter. As a student intern you may do some “grunt” work, everyone has to do it at some point. You will soon find out that some employees get paid to do the same work you do! Work hard and stand out, it could get you a job someday. By not being on the payroll you actually have more flexibility than anyone you work with, so have some fun with it.
Moving on: Statistics show that the average member of Generation-Y will change jobs every 18 months, so this wont come as a shock to you. Most internships take place over the summer, so you have about 4 months to get the most experience you can before heading back to school. Hopefully you will repeat this process numerous times.
Taking it all in: Lets be honest, while most internships are not paid, it feels good to be an student intern even though you’re at the bottom of the pyramid. First hand experience is much better than trying to get it out of a book or in a lecture. If you really didn’t enjoy your internship, then try another industry to find out what exactly you like to do. Also don’t forget to try and work for both big and small companies, as their structures are completely different.
From my own experiences looking back at being a student intern, I was kind of annoyed with some of the things that I did. Like a lot of internships you hear about, I had to get coffee and lunch for employees, sometimes even clean up after them. But then I thought back about the process and realized that there are so many young professionals out there who would give their right arm for this position and that I must have done something amazing to deserve this.
Student interns play a major role in our economy as we’re willing to fill the gaps and do the work that no one else wants to do. If millions of students every year didn’t apply for internships, I think the world would stop spinning.
- Author: Trace Cohen
