“Internship? Someone people need internships,” said education junior Alex Joshua. “But I don’t need one. Employers are jumping to hire me.”
Education students, such as Joshua, will have acquired experience in their field through the required student teaching component of their major. However, students venturing into other fields may need a bit more experience, and an internship is the path many students will undertake.
“You need as much experience as possible as soon as possible,” said Alicia Harpole, a biological sciences sophomore.
Harpole said she is beginning to take steps so she can gain experience in the medical field. However, she soon discovered internships are hard to come by.
“It’s difficult to get the ball rolling because many places you look to gain experience require that you already have experience,” she said.
Harpole said that is one reason why she believes that it is important to begin the search for internships as early as possible.
“The more experience you have, the better edge you have or competition in the job market,” she said.
Danielle Wheeler, a public relations junior understands the importance of having that edge. Her first experience interning was during the summer after her freshman year at LSU.
Wheeler said she located the opportunity in the internship coordinators office of the mass communications college. After submitting the required paperwork and a telephone interview, Wheeler was on her way to spend a summer in New York working at the publicity agency of Boneau/Bryan-Brown.
According to Wheeler, Boneau is an LSU alumus. After obtaining his degree in theater, he moved to New York and started this firm.
“He seeks LSU graduates to work for him,” Wheeler said. During the same summer she worked she met another LSU graduate interning at the company.
“You end up establishing connections with a lot of people,” Wheeler said.
Since her internship two years ago, she has kept in contact with the company and they constantly are reminding her to update her resumé and notify them when she graduates.
“I’m glad that I had this opportunity so early on,” Wheeler said. “Interning set me in line with what I knew I wanted to do,” she said.
Lauren Kwiatkowski, a writer for www.InterJobs.com, has spent the past four years interning as a writer for www.AboutJobs.com in New York City.
“A contact you make while interning can be the winning difference between yourself and another job applicant come graduation time,” Kwiatkowski said.
The writers of www.InternJobs.com thought the best way to provide information about the internship experience was to hire an intern to document it.
Kwiatkowski describes interning as “the perfect way to test the waters before diving into a career” and said those who choose to take interning opportunities are able to test-drive a career and showcase their skills and talents.
Even the race for internships has become highly competitive because of the condition of the job market, said Nancy Dunne, a columnist for the Financial Times.
Based on this Kwiatkowski concludes the best way for college students to secure the jobs they desire is through interning.
Companies look to their own intern programs when recruiting new college graduates for full-time, paid positions, and it makes sense, she said. Why risk hiring a new graduate when they can continue to work with a successful intern?