The internship is a career-based learning opportunity given by employers both in the non-profit and for-profit sectors to potential students which involves a “real world” work environment. It offers a hands-on opportunity for the students to work in their desired field. It is a period of time in which students can gain work experience related to what they have learned in their universities.
Internships can either be paid or unpaid. The trend is increasing towards the former. An intern works at the company for a fixed period of time, ranging from a few weeks to twelve months. Just like a job, you must go through an application process to get an internship. Applying and interviewing for internships enhances your job application and interviewing skills, which will be helpful when you will apply for a job. An internship on a resume differentiates you from other job seekers and makes you more competitive.
Introduction
Internships are becoming an increasingly common part of undergraduate life and early careers. Internship programs are highly popular among students in part because they represent an opportunity to learn about the world of work, build on classroom learning, and grow professional networks. Nonetheless, there has been much recent debate regarding the value of internships, especially for students at the undergraduate level. Several scholars and journalists have pointed out how internships—particularly unpaid ones— may provide the intern with limited educational or professional value. Internships are a growing, yet controversial, labor market phenomenon.
In particular, the issue of unpaid internships has been the source of legislative, judicial, and ethical debate. Students who completed internships as part of their university degree are better at making career decisions and are more satisfied with their career choices.
Why is internship important
The importance of an internship experience cannot be overstated. Today, employers favor prospective employees who have done not only one internship but multiple internships. A college education will serve to propel a graduate into a profession by conferring a degree, which demonstrates an academic proficiency in various theoretical and practical examples of ways that a job might be performed. An internship makes the classroom’s abstract theories and learned examples concrete by placing the student in a real-life work situation with real-life co-workers performing actual professional tasks, which the job encompasses.
Therefore, the payoff of an unpaid internship is that you will gain invaluable professional experience, where your self-confidence and self-esteem grow, and statistics indicate that the percentage of the odds that you’ll be one of the people who finds a job easily dramatically increases, which after all is why you’re going to college in the first place. Your internship experience goes on your resume as professional experience.
Benefits of internship
Internships are temporary. They can last from a few weeks to twelve months, with varying work hours but they can lead to long-term benefits, such as job opportunities in the company and increased knowledge about the industry. In addition, your supervisor and colleagues can be a reference for a job, college applications, or even scholarship applications.
Internships help a student identify their skills and interest.
Internships are a proven way to gain relevant knowledge, skills, and experience while establishing important connections in the field. Internships are also a way to find out if a specific field is something you could see yourself doing full-time.
Internship challenges you may face and their solutions
Unrecognized Work
The performance will not be noticed if we don’t tell anyone about it. You get into the office early, you stay late, you excel in projects assigned to you, and you even help out others and contribute to their success, yet somehow, no one seems to notice. It goes without saying that one does well in any field because one expects recognition. As an intern, you might be doing very well but still, find yourself in a position where your part is hardly appreciated. That can clearly be somewhat discouraging.
What to do: It’s natural to want attention, but you should not become completely dependent on it, or else each time you don’t receive the response you expected, you’ll find your confidence growing shakier than the last time.
If you continuously perform well your work can’t be overlooked. It is quite likely that you are new to the organization and are expected to be there for a brief time period.
Allocation of minor work
This is one of the commonest internship challenges faced by a large number of interns. While you might expect to be an important part of the organization, you are often offered just assisting jobs to your seniors and mentors.
What to do: Ask your manager or another co-worker if there is anything else you can help with: If you feel that you have done items 1-3 well, ask around if there are other tasks you can take on. If you are just making coffee for everyone, you need to take a step. Otherwise, it is quite normal to start with less-risky work. However, if you do well, you will soon be trusted by the authorities and allotted better assignments and projects.
Less Allowance
Undergraduates tend to be paid less than graduates or postgraduates You accepted an internship thinking that there won’t be much pressure and the compensation would be sufficient for it. But after you actually start, you realize the pay is far lesser than the work deserves.
What to do: You might feel that you and a full-time employee are doing the same amount of work still you are being paid so less. But interns are under a short-term contract and are paid less almost everywhere. If you are getting enough learning experiences and it is adding to your candidature for the future, there is no harm in forfeiting some of it.
Hesitant to Ask Questions
A common Intern Problem is asking questions. Your biggest hesitation lies in asking questions. What if asking questions will create an impression that you don’t know anything? So many thoughts roam through your mind. You’re not even sure which of your colleagues will help you or will they feel disturbed. You feel hesitant in interrupting them. You might land a really good internship but upon starting you realize that the work environment is excessively grave and professional. In such an environment, you find it difficult to ask questions for the fear of being judged.
What to do: Everybody out there knows that you are an intern so be confident enough to ask questions if you are not sure about something. It is always better to ask questions than doing a mistake.
Understanding the office culture
It sure takes time to understand the office culture. Since every organizational culture varies from office to office. Some have a rigid structure while others are flexible. Though organizations are moving more towards flexibility nowadays, some offices do have strict policies. Then again, there are some internal differences too. During your first weeks of socializing struggles, trying to observe organizational behavior is a challenge. Your perception is very important here since according to that you progress in socializing.
What to do: If you want to better understand your culture, look at your company’s priorities. These goals and initiatives reveal what your organization values and what it does not (both explicitly and implicitly). While every employee contributes to company culture, leaders have more impact and influence. Examine the messages your leadership team puts forth, and whether an action follows those words.
Understanding teamwork
Understanding teamwork is one of the biggest Intern Problems or Internship Challenges because teamwork in the professional sector is a lot different than your projects at varsity. Miscommunication, misinterpretation of the actual objectives, and different opinions of team members are common and vary from that of the project group work you’ve done. Also, mishaps in internal communication also affect your work. You find yourself not sure how to resolve many cases.
What to do: Establish a connection with each team member. As teams become comfortable with one another, their efficiency and productivity will improve as they build trust and confidence in each other.
Competitive Co-interns
Co-interns viewing each other as competitors can sabotage collaboration and teamwork. It can even cause workers to sabotage one another’s efforts in order to get ahead, leading to mistrust and fear. Some interns get frustrated by a work environment that feels competitive. Constant comparison can be exhausting and can eventually be demotivating.
What to do: Contrary to what it looks like, competitive co-interns make your experience a better one. You will get to feel the real pressure to work better and get noticed instead of just doing random work and completing your internship duration.
Unpaid Internships are exploiting youngsters
In the past, unpaid internships have become a common practice amongst companies. In order for an internship to be academically worthy, students doing internships in conjunction with their college coursework are expected to gain hands-on experience that helps them develop the knowledge and skills required to gain entry into their field. For every student who asks for a stipend, there is always that one person who is willing to do it for free.
The cracking down on unpaid internships has recently come to light due to employers seeking free labor with no intention of hiring interns in the future. One of the benefits of an internship is the training and establishment of a professional network with the hopes of being hired for full-time employment once the internship is over.
Unpaid internships have become more and more common since the recent economic recession. When evaluating, the growth of unpaid internships must be viewed in light of their effect on the intern and the overall economy.
There is also the inequality factor with unpaid internships since only students with financial means are able to do them because those students that are not wealthy need to make money.
When Unpaid Internships Are Beneficial
There are some instances where an unpaid internship still has its advantages, such as providing a student with experiences they could not get elsewhere, along with the opportunity to establish strong networking connections with professionals in the field. Excellent recommendation letters are another advantage that would help the student gain full-time employment with other organizations in the field. For non-profit organizations unable to pay their interns it’s not an issue; but for for-profit companies looking to save money, they could find themselves in the middle of a lawsuit that would cost them much more than if they had agreed to pay their interns.
Why are people still interested in adding internships to their resumes, even unpaid ones
Gaining Valuable Experience
The first, and probably the most important advantage of an unpaid internship, is the experience it provides. If you choose to spend your time in an unpaid internship to gain knowledge about a particular field, you will inevitably benefit from the time you spent doing so. While class time is invaluable, many things can be learned through internships that simply can’t be taught inside the confines of a classroom setting. In addition to this, unpaid internships allow you to apply the theories and practices you learned in the classroom, thus giving you a practical understanding of the subject matter.
Advantages for Future Employment
Probably the most convincing reason that a student chooses an unpaid internship is the opportunities it can provide post-graduation. In fact, many employers offer paid positions to the interns who worked with them in the past. Companies choose to do this because they have already developed a strong rapport with the intern, and in addition, they don’t have to spend as much time (and sometimes money) training the intern about the company as they would an external candidate. In a similar vein, putting an unpaid internship on your resume shows potential employers that you are willing to work hard no matter what the terms of the employment are.
Allows Students to Pursue Interests
An unpaid internship often allows you to explore a particular field of interest in order to help you decide if this is the path you should take. In a similar vein, because many fields are broad and offer a lot of choices, an internship can allow you to gain more specific knowledge or learn more about the area you want to focus on once you graduate. This is especially true in fields like medicine, finance, and technology. If correctly used, how internships can be used to frame the careers of the young generation into being skilled professionals