What You Need to Know About Internships?
Did you get to test the job market through an internship when you were still in university? Or are you still torn between doing internships or not?
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If you can do an internship do it, if not, look for other available opportunities.
Internships offer immense value for you in the job market and give you an advantage over others who do not do them. In this post, we dive into the advantages of internships, types of internships, and whether they’re really necessary for your career development.
An internship is a limited working time offered by an organization and gives you an insight into how a job would be like. Students need to explore different fields to see what they like before they jump into the workspace.
Internships have gained popularity recently making it open to everyone as compared to a couple of years ago. The job market is more competitive now more than ever before which makes internship beneficial for gaining experience while still in school. Doing many internships before graduating will give you an advantage in the job market over those who didn’t do internships.
Internship helps you learn more than work skills but also life skills that are not taught at the University. They also give your future employer an idea of what you can do and whether you understand the industry.
Creativity starts getting enhanced at the internship level when you get exposed to an organization’s operations. An internship allows you to change the course of your career by jumping from what you don’t like to what you like which is a luxury you cannot afford with a real job.
Employers should pay interns to motivate them to work hard and also erase the negative reputation of internships.
Research in the United States shows that paid internships have a positive outcome while unpaid internships have a less positive outcome and can result in a negative correlation to salary implement outcomes and job search. It also shows that in other parts of the world, internships are crucial for university graduates to secure jobs. They give graduates a prospect of landing jobs as compared to their counterparts who didn’t do internships.
What about a post-graduation internship? Post-graduation internships should be considered as a potential route when you don’t have viable experience in your field rather than jumping into the job market straight out of university.
Find a paid internship abroad
You could make money a non-issue by looking for an international internship that pays you. While these opportunities are comparatively rare, they do exist.
Internships are important and they do matter to both students and employers. here are the reasons why:
- It opens your eyes to the day to day life. This helps you decide what you want which is something that is not offered in school.
- It highlights your strengths and weaknesses– helps showcase what you’re good at, what you’re bad at, and what you need to improve in.
- It offers relevant experience and improves your knowledge.
- Paid internships have positive outcomes while unpaid internships have a negative outcome.
- It gives graduates better prospects of being employed and high wages five years after graduation.
- The different types of internships that exist:
- Remote internships, also known as online or virtual internships where you conduct your internship on your computer while you’re in a different city or from home.
- Unpaid internships. These are typically 6-12 weeks long usually in the summertime where you exchange your time for your college credit.
- Paid internships. This is described as the big internship but also the hardest to get.
We have already established that internships are important for you as a person but they’re also crucial to your career development in the following ways:
- It gives you an advantage over other candidates who may not have had internships.
- It makes it easier to get the roles that you applied for.
- It helps you build your skillset and strengthen your weaknesses.
- It gives you an opportunity for self-realization- you learn more about yourself while you’re still in school.
- It helps with networking – meeting people in the job market which comes in handy as you later officially join the job market.
- It helps build your confidence going into your career.
Episode Timeline:
- [3:49] Defining internship.
- [6:09] The benefits of doing internships before graduating to gain an advantage in the job market.
- [18:45] Learning to balance your university education and the internship and travel experiences.
- [25:46] The learning ground that internship provides allowing you to try on a career that you like.
- [29:38] Why there’s a need for paid internships to encourage and motivate students to engage in them.
- [32:26] The benefits of internships and what research says about them in different parts of the world.
- [35:46] Why employers have confidence with experienced employees.
- [37:07] The importance of post-graduation internships to gain more experience rather than jumping right into work.
- [41:03] Why you have better job prospects when you study and live in a city.
- [42:46] How to conduct research on which companies to work remotely for if you cannot afford a big city.
- [43:33] The types of internships that exist.
- [47:06] The importance of internships in your career development.
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