|
As a college student, I can't even begin to tell you how valuable work experience is before you start looking for your first full-time job. Far too often, college freshmen and sophomores fall into the habit of going home for the summer and resuming their old part-time jobs, making $6.00, $7.00, or $8.00/hour. But these jobs offer you little to no real-world experience that will make you more marketable to employers.
That's where internships come in. These internships give students a chance to add some work experience to their resume before they graduate, while also rewarding them with either a paycheck or college credit. Sure, some interns will tell you that they spent their summer making coffee for management and filing papers all day. But if you carefully research your internship opportunities, you can land the right internship that will teach you more about the possible career you want to go into. I recommend searching for internships through websites like Rising Star Internships and through your college's career center.
I wish I could tell you that landing an internship is an easy feat. Unfortunately, that would be a lie. Finding internships gets progressively easier as you approach graduation, but few companies are interested in hiring freshman and sophomore interns. Truthfully, before landing my internship following my sophomore year in college, I had applied for 33 positions. Of those 33 internships, I only received an interview for one of them. To my own pleasant surprise, it was for the internship I was most interested in. And I ended up receiving the position, so all worked out well.
So how can you improve your odds of receiving an interview? My biggest advice to you is to be persistent. Find one job that you really really want and go after it with all of your passion. Send the company your resume and if you haven't heard back within a couple weeks, give them a call. At least it shows that you're really interested in the internship.
The decision of whether to take an internship for credit through your university or whether to seek a paying internship can be tricky. Some colleges require that their interns receive credit for an internship prior to graduation. If this is the case, you should by all means take it for credit. But other than that, I would only take an internship for credit if it either 1.) provided great work experience or 2.) I needed the credits to graduate on time. Other than that, there are a number of great internships that pay pretty well ($8.00-20.00 per hour).
If you land an internship, I suggest you work really hard at your job, regardless of the work they give you. The reason is because a number of companies use interns as a way to recruit full-time employees. So if they like you, you might be given a job offer when you graduate. And even if you don't get a job offer, at least you'll be able to put it on your resume that you worked for them.
Overall, internships provide you with a lot of great work experience that you probably wouldn't be able to get elsewhere. I recommend that you try hard to get one, and once you get it, work your hardest at the job.
Previous Article - Next Article Like this article? Bookmark It |
Set Concrete Goals
Rights Issue