What College Students Look For In Internships

By Francine Fluetsch on November 17, 2014

This article is brought to you by Dream Careers, the largest global internship program for college students offering all-inclusive programs in 11 cities worldwide. To learn more about Dream Careers, please visit us at SummerInternships.com.

image via http://www.caphillstyle.com

Internship: the word that is buzzing on every college student’s lips.

“I got this awesome one over summer;” “mine was even paid;” “mine sucked but it will advance me in my field.” You hear all these things and get nervous, especially if you haven’t done an internship. But don’t fret, there is still plenty of time.

But since you want the internship to be worthwhile (since most likely you won’t be getting paid) here are a few common things students look for in internships before they take them.

An internship in your field of study:

Internships are a great way to get experience, and show you are willing to learn for free! Grad schools love that. Your first choice should really be to try and find an internship that is somehow related to what you want to do later in life. Want to be a vet? Go talk to a local animal hospital to see if they need an intern to help out.

Places will be more willing to take you on as an intern because they don’t have to pay you and for most things you don’t need prior experience.

According to this article by Margaret Cook, “an internship at a company that is well known for the career you are pursuing can have a positive impact on your resume and future career opportunities.”

Who knows? If they like you as an intern, they might invite you to work there full time once you graduate! This would really work in your favor since they would already know that you are a hard worker, and you would already know the ins and outs of the company.

Matthew Banks, a recent computer science graduate from UC Davis, got an internship during school, stuck it out, and now has an awesome job with a handsome starting salary.

Something that’s fun:

While you want your internship to be in your field of study in some way, you also want to enjoy it. If you want to be a writer and the internship is writing direction manuals for how to install a microwave, chances are you aren’t going to be having as much fun as if you were interning for Seventeen Magazine and writing gossipy columns about celebrities and sex.

Of course, sometimes you have to take what you can get, but it might be worthwhile to wait it out for something that you will actually enjoy and not mind putting countless hours into.

The more fun you have with it, the better work you will produce, which will result in a better letter of recommendation.

Something that lets you excel in multiple areas:

You want to be a well rounded individual, so having an internship that works in more than one thing will be very beneficial to you. It shows you can multitask, learn new things, and apply them.

Cook also stated in her article that “not only will this [wide-ranging experience] prepare you to handle the many facets of your career, employers also take notice of candidates who’ve performed an array of career-related tasks during an internship.”

An internship that helps you decide what not to do:

Internships can be a wonderful way to figure out exactly what you don’t want to end up doing with your life. Think teaching might be for you? Try and be an assistant at a high school and see how you like it. If you love it, wonderful! And if you realize that high school kids suck and there is no way in hell you’d ever want that career path anymore, then that internship sure helped you dodge a bullet.

Try out some different internships to see what would be best suited for you. It won’t be a waste of time since it will still be a resume booster, and it will save you a lot of time and energy in the future.

At one point, before I knew I wanted to be a writer, I thought being a vet would be really fun. My dad’s boss had a hook-up for me to start an internship with a veterinarian, and I almost puked on the first day.

Let’s just say writing is definitely more for me–no guts and blood and stuff. Had I not gone to that internship, I might be pursuing the totally wrong career.

Now, before you apply for an internship, remember to …

Do your research:

Make sure that the company you are going to intern for stands for what you believe in/is credible. If you are against animal testing and find out the make-up company that you want to intern for utilizes animal testing, chances are you won’t want to intern for them out of principal.

Maybe even go into the place and take a look around. Find a fellow intern and ask how they are liking it.

And remember, once you have your internship …

Don’t be the Starbucks runner:

As we know, interns can be pushed around and end up not doing a lot of the actual work they thought they would be doing. Getting coffee and making copies is fine if that’s what you signed up for, but if you were promised that you’d get to work in a lab and help figure out how to cure cancer, you might be a little disappointed to say the least.

This article on internships.com, said “possibly more than anything else, interns are constantly clamoring for more “meaningful” work.”

You want to gain real life experience that will help you later on, especially if knowledge is all that you are getting back for all your hard working hours.

Looking for a top internship in an exciting city? Enroll in Dream Careers and guarantee yourself an internship and a fun summer in your choice of 11 cities globally. To visit our website, please click here.

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format