What Will an Internship Do for Me?
There are many benefits to completing an internship! They include:
- A chance to apply some of the concepts that you’ve been learning in classes to a real workplace and earn some college credit at the same time.
- You can do and observe how things work in an applied situation and you can observe how you think and feel in a new role (so you can try out a career field in advance).
- An internship dramatically increases the chances that you will get hired – either by your internship host or another organization. Some say your chances of getting hired are doubled when you can show internship experience on your resume. Employers frequently look for internship experience in their field when they hire new employees!
- You have an opportunity to develop new skills. More skills and advanced skills in your field almost always make you more attractive as a candidate for employment. Your new skills may be technical, such as building a more complicated spreadsheet if you’re an accounting student, or your new skills may be human, such as learning how best to get along on a team in a professional setting.
- The process of preparing a resume, searching for an internship, and interviewing are important practice for a job search for a permanent position.
- You’ll have a chance to make new friends and to build a professional network. Your network can offer you job leads and mentors who will help you learn the ropes of a new career. Letters of recommendation often are important in landing the job of your dreams.
- A successful internship is a confidence builder. It helps you know that you can do it!
