By Heather Danforth
A recent survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers indicates that internships are an important way for students to prepare for full-time work, and more and more students are taking advantage of them as an educational opportunity.
BYU Career Placement Services agrees with the survey''s results. They encourage BYU students to take advantage of internship opportunities to prepare them for the work force.
'Internships allow students to do things in a real world environment that they''ve learned in the classroom,' said Jared Blake, web master at Career Placement Services. Blake maintains a web page with internship information at www.byu.edu/intern.
Internships provide experience that employers look for when hiring, and they help a student decide if he really enjoys the work he''s chosen.
'We consider that internships are one of the most important undertakings that students can do in anticipation of a job search,' said Richard Cox, placement advisor at Career Placement Services.
Internship experience helps students compete in the workforce, Cox said, because about 80 percent of college graduates will have at least one internship experience when they enter the job market, while 60 percent will have two.
'From a competitive standpoint, we feel it''s really quite important for a graduate to have internship experience,' Cox said.
An early start, research and networking help students find good internships, Cox said. At an interview, employers look for genuine students with commitment to the internship and to the profession.
'With that, of course, goes energy, enthusiasm and attitude,' he said.
Internships help students to network professionally and gain experience in the work force. They are also useful job search tools in themselves. About half of all interns receive an offer for full-time work upon graduation from the institution they interned with, Cox said, although not all of them accept the offer.
While working on an internship, students learn about the environment and expectations of the job, and can discover whether they are committed to an occupation or employer, Cox said.
'Some students do internships and conclude that that isn''t what they wanted to do,' he said. 'It''s not an effective way to eliminate options, but some people have decided as a consequence of an internship that they don''t want to do that after all because it''s not what they expected.'
Internships may or may not be paid, and students can receive academic credit for internship experience through the Academic Internship Office. Whether an internship is paid is less important than the quality of experience it offers, Blake said.
'I think the thing that would make it the most successful are the experiences that the student has,' Blake said. 'If it''s something where you''re sitting there filing papers and being a secretary or something, you''re really not getting the chance to put into practice the things you''re learning here at school, but if you''re actually out working on projects and doing things that are what you would be doing once you graduate, that gives you a lot of really good hands-on experience.'