How every student feels when applying to internships
No, I don’t have five years of experience, and yes I kind of need money to support myself while living halfway across the country
Applying to internships is not a fun time. In fact, it’s probably the most frustrating, time consuming and terrifying time of a college student’s life. But it is necessary if we want to have a full-time job in the future.
It can often seem like companies are forgetting just what an “intern” really is. We are not full-time employees that you can hire to do your slave (not to mention unpaid) work. We are applying because we want to learn about your company and gain experience in your field. We want to watch and learn.
Most students wish these companies would keep some of these things in mind, such as:
We probably don’t have experience… that’s why we’re applying
It’s understandable that a company would want to hire students who already have experience in the field. Of course, hiring someone with this working knowledge already would save them time and effort in teaching us those skills. But this also completely defeats the purpose of the internship in the first place. We are applying to this internship because we need to gain experience.
It seems paradoxical when an internship posting claims that you already need to have a plethora of knowledge and at least a year or two of working in the industry. Because of these requirements, it has become extremely difficult for students to get a foot in the door. Now we need experience to gain more experience, and that just doesn’t make sense.
Me and my friend Kittsie got to intern at the Cannes Film Festival in France May 2015 and our employers gave us red carpet tickets!
Cover letters really stress us out
It would be really great if a job posting would list the things that they want to know about us in our cover letter. Some companies are looking for interns with a good personality, some are looking for an intern with certain career goals or motivations, others are looking to see that you are spending your time outside of school and work doing things in this field or growing as a person. It’s always different.
So when we go to write a cover letter crafted to a specific company, it would really help us out if said company would at least give a bit about what they are hoping to hear about. This would save time and anxiety on everyone’s part.
No, we aren’t OK with not being paid
Close to all internships these days are unpaid, or are for class credit. This also adds to the difficulty of finding the most beneficial one. Personally, almost all of the internships I want or need are in three places: California, New York City, or Colorado. But the problem is that I live in Massachusetts. That means that I would have to pay to relocate to these offices for several months, pay for transportation, housing and food, all while working an unpaid job.
Yes, it’s possible to find a job that pays on the side, but that means finding, applying for, and being accepted to TWO jobs. And a part time job at a restaurant or cafe will not be enough to pay rent in California for four months. It’s just not. What’s worse is that most of the time it’s not actually legal to make an internship unpaid.
Even the UMass Amherst Internships and Co-ops page discusses the issue of unpaid internships and have statistics showing that those who worked paid internships entered the workforce with a higher starting salary and were more often offered full time jobs after the internship was up.