Susan Sandberg

Internships.com CEO, Robin D. Richards, says “Internships are the new job interview. With seven out of every ten internships turning into full time jobs, choosing the right opportunity to pursue is critical.”  The Web site offers search options, including All Opportunities, Internships, and Jobs to help your students find the best fit. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, technology giants have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response to “woo summer interns.”

The article identifies several companies that might be excellent internship / job resources for your students:

• Facebook / Google:  Facebook Inc. plans to hire 625 interns for next summer, up from 550 this year. Google hired 1,000 engineering interns this past summer, up 20% from the previous year. Yolanda Mangolini, Google’s director of talent and outreach programs, says the company is still figuring out its target for 2012, based on its overall staffing plan. Google generally extends offers to the majority of its intern class. “It is one of the primary ways we find full-time hires,” Ms. Mangolini says.
• Dropbox Inc.:  The company plans to hire 30 engineering interns for next summer, up from nine this year, says engineering manager Rian Hunter, who adds the company wants interns to comprise one-third of its engineering team. The San Francisco-based file-sharing company this year dispatched its entire engineering team to recruit at more than a dozen colleges, up from just five schools last year. “More interns mean more opportunities to bring people to the company,” Mr. Hunter says, noting Dropbox is seeking people as young as college freshman.
• Bump Technologies:  Interns allow you to “try before you buy,” says Bump Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Dave Lieb, who plans to hire as many as 10 for next summer. He says the 30-person company pays intern engineers about $10,000 for a roughly 12-week stint, similar to what other tech start-ups say they pay. Tom Greany, 23, a full-time software engineer at Bump Technologies, was originally a summer intern at the company.
• Venture Capitalists:  Venture capitalists have begun doing some intern legwork for their companies. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, recruiting at 25 college campuses across the country, helped a cohort of its companies hire around 25 engineering interns for the coming summer through a new program called KPCB Engineering Fellows. Kleiner’s companies, including Klout Inc. and Twitter Inc., started notifying their new interns last week. “Competition for talent is so fierce,” says Kleiner partner Juliet de Baubigny. She says the firm may expand the program, which is currently for juniors in college, to others, including possibly high-school students.

Susan Sandberg

The labor market continues to improve. The U.S. added 200,000 jobs in December, while the unemployment rate fell to 8.5%, the lowest rate since February 2009. The picture improves for internships, too, as new trends emerge in 2012. More and more internships are being paid, more internships are leading to jobs, and new innovative strategies generate more internships.

Here’s how:

• Paid internships:  The Chicago Transit Authority offers a full-time, paid internship in Technology & Resource Management. It provides seniors or graduate students with hands-on, real-world experience, enabling interns to integrate and utilize knowledge and skills from the classroom and to discover where further competencies are needed. Major: Technology, Management, Tele-Communication (Communication Engineering), Business, Finance, Planning, Policy. Here’s a promising internship found on Internships.com for Commodity Trader at Norman International in Houston, TX. There are 5 full-time, paid positions at Norman, a privately held energy company with a portfolio of competitive and regulated energy subsidiaries.  Interns will market a portfolio of petroleum and natural gas derivatives to maximize sales revenues, work with a range of clients, develop service and maintain a book of clients in the energy industry. Suggest that your students browse through the thousands of listings to find other paid internships.
• Internships into jobs:  President Obama on Dec. 31 signed a bill that seeks to encourage federal agencies to hire more interns into full-time jobs. The Federal Internship Improvement Act, which was attached to the National Defense Authorization Act, requires the Office of Personnel Management to create and maintain a centralized database of people who have finished, or are just about to finish, internships with federal agencies and are looking for full-time federal jobs. That database will contain job seekers’ names, contact information and relevant skills. The amendment also requires agencies to appoint an internship coordinator, and to conduct exit interviews and surveys with outgoing interns. Agencies will be required to send a report on how many interns took part in an internship program over the last year along with demographic and educational material. Those reports also must describe the work interns did, how the internship programs used mentors, and how agencies are recruiting new interns and taking steps to offer more interns permanent federal jobs.
• Innovative Strategy: A pro-active professor at Ivy Tech in Indiana utilizes the local media to help his students find internships. He recently wrote an article promoting Ivy Tech students as excellent internship material and asking businesses to contact him to arrange internships consisting of 144 flexible hours of accounting or similar work. He also listed the students’ education and skills. “Any type of business with some in-house accounting is ideal for our interns and can be a great asset to your business. We have had students work in local CPA firms, banks, multiple for profit business, hospitals and municipal government centers.” He ended the piece with a clear call for action. “Please help our students obtain this important piece of their education by offering internships. If you’d like more information or would be willing to interview students for potential internships anywhere in East Central Indiana, contact Kevin Veneskey, CPA, accounting.

Susan Sandberg

Internships.com CEO, Robin D. Richards, says “Internships are the new job interview. With seven out of every ten internships turning into full time jobs, choosing the right opportunity to pursue is critical.”  The Web site offers search options, including All Opportunities, Internships, and Jobs to help your students find the best fit. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, technology giants have been expanding their summer-intern programs, while smaller tech companies are ramping up theirs in response to “woo summer interns.” The article identifies several companies that might be excellent internship / job resources for your students:

• Facebook / Google:  Facebook Inc. plans to hire 625 interns for next summer, up from 550 this year. Google hired 1,000 engineering interns this past summer, up 20% from the previous year. Yolanda Mangolini, Google’s director of talent and outreach programs, says the company is still figuring out its target for 2012, based on its overall staffing plan. Google generally extends offers to the majority of its intern class. “It is one of the primary ways we find full-time hires,” Ms. Mangolini says.
• Dropbox Inc.:  The company plans to hire 30 engineering interns for next summer, up from nine this year, says engineering manager Rian Hunter, who adds the company wants interns to comprise one-third of its engineering team. The San Francisco-based file-sharing company this year dispatched its entire engineering team to recruit at more than a dozen colleges, up from just five schools last year. “More interns mean more opportunities to bring people to the company,” Mr. Hunter says, noting Dropbox is seeking people as young as college freshman.
• Bump Technologies:  Interns allow you to “try before you buy,” says Bump Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Dave Lieb, who plans to hire as many as 10 for next summer. He says the 30-person company pays intern engineers about $10,000 for a roughly 12-week stint, similar to what other tech start-ups say they pay. Tom Greany, 23, a full-time software engineer at Bump Technologies, was originally a summer intern at the company.
• Venture Capitalists:  Venture capitalists have begun doing some intern legwork for their companies. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, recruiting at 25 college campuses across the country, helped a cohort of its companies hire around 25 engineering interns for the coming summer through a new program called KPCB Engineering Fellows. Kleiner’s companies, including Klout Inc. and Twitter Inc., started notifying their new interns last week. “Competition for talent is so fierce,” says Kleiner partner Juliet de Baubigny. She says the firm may expand the program, which is currently for juniors in college, to others, including possibly high-school students.

Susan Sandberg

The U.S. is experiencing three jobs crises at once, according to Harvard labor economist Lawrence Katz. The first jobs crisis is the one driven by the steep drop in aggregate demand of goods and services. The second one—long-term unemployment—grows out of the first. The third crisis flows from the merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution. As a career services professional, you can help advise your students on how to navigate these trends and maximize their education to compete in the changing employment picture.

Here are several trends to track:

• Consulting:  Consulting is among the most popular career choices. Pulin Sanghvi, a former McKinsey consultant who runs the career office at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, says, “It’s especially useful if you don’t know exactly what you want to do.”  The top consulting firms hire people from nearly every type of graduate school, ranging from law schools to medical school, public-policy schools or other non-business schools. After they are hired, consultants parachute into big companies, often meeting with top executives who are decades older. Companies also tend to outsource corporate strategy issues to bright young consultants.
• Externships:  Many schools are developing these programs. At MIT the Externship Program, started in 1997, matches students with MIT alums for a one-month work experience over Independent Activities Period in January. Students apply through the Alumni Association website, and externship sponsors review the applicants for compatibility with the position. The sponsors then send back a list of qualified students to generate matches.  This year, a record number of 294 MIT students will be participating in the Externship Program. Last year, a student who took an Externship at Bank of America in January received a summer internship and now has a full-time job offer.
• Partnerships:  Robert W. Goldfarb, a New York management consultant, interviewed 85 recent college graduates about their success in finding jobs, according to a NYT’s article. Only 5 had found jobs in their career fields. Managers who used to favor new graduates with fresh ideas now choose older employees who make fewer missteps than recent grads. Goldfarb’s solution is to encourage partnerships between recent grads and the companies they hope will employ them. He suggests that corporations invest in training and developing young professionals even if there isn’t an immediate opening. They could be hired as salaried trainees and given 3-6 months to prove their value in various assignments.
• Global opportunities:  Europe’s leading multi-material packaging manufacturer, LINPAC Packaging, is offering two new internships to undergraduates or recent graduates looking to kick start their career with an innovative manufacturing company. The food packaging company, which has sites across the world, is offering the paid placements during 2012 with flexible start dates and working periods. The successful applicants will work with the central innovation team on two key projects, gaining a greater understanding of today’s manufacturing industry and developing new skills. For more international internship opportunities, browse through the thousands listed on Internships.com.

Susan Sandberg

As the recession drags on, more and more financially strapped students want and need to have paid internships. Fortunately, more and more organizations are finding funds to pay interns. Although the compensation might be small, a paid internship boosts student morale as well as income.

The following tips offer new directions for paid internships:

• Sponsorships at nonprofits:  Traditionally, nonprofit organizations have not offered many paid internships. But that’s changing. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, has received support from the Tucker Foundation since 1997, funding between 3 and 5 interns each year. Summerfield Johnston, whose family operates the Tucker Foundation, believes the fund supports work that benefits both the institution and the intern. Through their research, programming, writing, and other activities, the interns’ work benefits not only the museum, but each student’s life work as well. When exploring paid internships in nonprofit organizations, look for sponsorships that fund internships.

• Paid internships with low number of applicants:  If students haven’t selected a major, you might guide them into fields where internships are paid, and they can sample potential concentrations based on their qualifications. Cal State Fullerton’s College of Engineering and Computer Science and concentrations in the College of Business and Economics have a large number of paid internships that are available and a low number of applicants. These  areas of study have a low number of applicants because they do not require students to complete an internship to graduate. There are currently 22 interns in engineering, three in accounting and four in finance. Engineering, accounting and finance seem to have the highest paying internships.

• International internship sites:  With a shortage of experienced IT workers in New Zealand and the competition to recruit them increasing, Sky City Entertainment Group is hoping its new internship program will help it secure young IT talent while providing interns with much needed real world experience. The internship will involve a year-long, paid position in the Sky City IT team, with candidates being provided internal and external training in system management, system support and delivery, and systems integration. Sky City has 5 locations across Australia and New Zealand. Employment by Sky City at the end of the internship is not guaranteed, but the work experience will benefit the interns in securing IT jobs in the future.

Internships.com search:  There are now over 56,000 internships in nearly 30,000 companies in 7,500 cities listed on the site. Instruct your students to enter Paid under Compensation when searching for an internship and see what comes up. For example, InfoScroll in New Jersey offers 18 part-time, paid entry level Account Manager Internships with Residual Income. This virtual internship requires fewer than 10 hours per week. Interns assist in setting up local restaurants and other businesses with Free Advertising on InfoScroll. In Redmond, Washington, a paid Journalism Intern will perform multiple tasks for a condominium association, including writing a monthly newsletter that goes out to 770 homeowners.  Tell your students that the word is out:  Paid is in.

Susan Sandberg

Some of your students are finishing up classes and internships and looking forward to December graduation. Yet they’re anxious about finding a job in January in a weak market. Many of them face a dilemma—should they be sending out their resumes for internships or for jobs or for both simultaneously?  If they have internships, should they continue them if possible?  As a career services professional, you might find the following points helpful in advising your students:

• Remind your students that the two most important elements in their future are career success and professional reputation.  It’s tempting for your students to cover all the bases by sending out resumes to the places where they want to work to advance their careers, but with the added insurance of also applying for internships in desirable companies just in case the jobs don’t come through in this weak economy. Advise your students to be careful not to damage their professional reputations by accepting an internship and then dropping it if they get a job offer in another firm. And they may not want to spin their wheels working in a company outside of their area of interest, which would be irrelevant to their career success.
• Recommend that your students decide which is the more promising avenue and go for it. If they know what job they want and with what firm, concentrate on getting that position. However, if their only opportunities are in fields not related to their career goals or in geographical locations that do not interest them, they should consider going the internship route. They might begin by applying for internships in their target company or at least in the city that they’ve selected as their new home base. Then, they can plan to transition the internship into the job that they really want. At least they’ll be in a company that could be a viable part of their career future.
• Encourage your December graduates to be selective. They may be in an unpaid internship now and want to turn it into a job, but the company says there are no openings at this time. Do they take a full-time job in another company that doesn’t interest them but offers a paid position?  They should consider what will make them more qualified in their field. It’s better to stay in a great internship and take a part-time job for financial support while waiting for the right job opening in the company. They may miss some other full-time job offers, but they’ll be building their skills. Assure them that employers value their internship experience. Statistics prove that an internship is the surest way to get hired.
• Advise your students to network and maintain connection with their internship personnel. If the company cannot continue their internship, they shouldn’t give up or take it personally. Company policy may limit the length of internships and other interns may already be signed up. However, students should keep in touch with supervisors at their past internships because one never knows when an opening will occur.  They should check in several times a year through email, phone calls, or holiday greetings to make sure that the internship supervisors remember them and will be interested in talking to a former intern or giving a reference when a job opens up.

Susan Sandberg

Resumes are more important than ever before in getting internships. The competition is fierce not only from students seeking multiple internships but from unemployed persons who want internships as a way to get a foot in the door and update their aging resumes. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows unemployment still hovering at 9%. The Internet has also made resume submission easy, resulting in an overwhelming deluge of resumes for every posting. But the average amount of time spent on reading a resume is only 12 seconds.

So how can you help the students lined up at your Career Center for Spring and Summer internships create resumes that will compete in this tight market? Here are a few tips to share with them:

• Maximize the Summary of Qualifications, the area right under your name and contact information, by highlighting your soft skills to showcase a more in-depth profile of yourself and create a bond with the reader. These skills, such as leadership, communication, problem solving, and team building, should relate to skills listed as desirable in a targeted internship posting. The language in the Summary should align with the same language in the internship listing, incorporating key words that match.
• Emphasize positive personal traits. Since this Summary is the first item a reader sees, make sure to present a positive image of someone who would make a great intern. Some examples are “dynamic, decisive, energetic, focused, highly ethical, team player, innovative, creative, accurate, high-performance, results-driven, solutions-oriented, and detail-oriented.” Look for distinguishing factors that will make your resume capture the reader’s attention. Do you speak several languages, travel internationally, hold important campus offices, or have won special scholarships or honors?
• Utilize powerful language, such as “keen problem solving, negotiating, and decision-making skills” or “expertise in customer relations and new market development.” Other phrases could include “high achiever and honors student with outstanding presentation and communication skills.”  Introduce each resume bullet with a strong, active verb, including “Spearhead, orchestrate, lead, manage, analyze, improve, increase, achieve, initiate,” etc. Keep the resume to nouns and verbs, deleting articles, such as “the, a, an.”
• Develop entries in Additional Information to stimulate the reader’s interest in meeting you. This section, informally called talking points, can contain items that don’t fit anywhere else in your resume, but reflect good character or drive. Entries can range from hiking the Appalachian Trail, playing in a band, winning marathons, raising funds for charities, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity or other groups, or starting a small business, which could be anything from a lawn mowing service to computer repair.
• Maintain a professional image in both your Summary and Additional Information. Keep your entries short and refrain from mentioning personal items, such as marital status or religious affiliations.  If you belong to any professional organizations on campus, such as the student chapter of Public Relations Society of America, be sure to list them. For hobbies, list only unusual ones rather than the mundane ones like reading or traveling. Try to market yourself as a multi-faceted person with much value to bring to a Spring or Summer internship.
• Click on Student Resources in internships.com and find out more about how to market yourself. You’ll find articles on how to write a resume, resume examples, editing resumes, and proofing resumes, which will help you refine your resume.

Susan Sandberg

American campuses are desirable places, according to the cover story in the Education section of a recent New York Times, especially to the Chinese. The number of Chinese undergraduates in the U.S. has tripled in the past three years to 40,000.  One Chinese student chose to attend the University of Delaware 7,000 miles from home.  Meanwhile, more and more American students are leaving campus and heading to foreign countries for internships. Why not utilize the offerings at your campus to find internships abroad for your students?

Here’s how some campuses are helping American students go 7,000 miles from home for global opportunities:

• University of Missouri:   Highlights for China Internships Summer 2012 include work in a Chinese or international company. Live and work in dynamic and exciting Chinese cities (Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Chongqing). Possibility to earn one-to-three credit hours from your internship. Open to all sophomores, juniors, and seniors.
• Dartmouth:  Since 2005, eight of the 21 Dartmouth alumni who interned at the American University in Kuwait (AUK) through the Dartmouth College-American University of Kuwait Project have received national fellowships and post-graduate scholarships to study Arab culture, media and linguistics in North Africa and the Middle East. Internships at AUK are 10 weeks long and are offered during Fall and Spring terms.
• Syracuse University Florence (SUF):   Founded in 1959 and one of the oldest study abroad programs in Italy, SUF has been consistently ranked as one of the best American study abroad programs, providing distinguished academic curricula, combined with an outstanding support for cultural immersion. The SUF faculty members are internationally renowned scholars, and the staff is dedicated to meeting the needs of today’s students and helping them immerse themselves in the Italian culture.
• Lehigh University:  The Lee Iacocca International Internship program offers individual corporate, non-profit, and civic internships. Expenses paid, including travel, accommodations, and stipend for meals in-country. Examples of Summer 2012 internships are Pestana Hotels & Resorts, Portugal – Marketing & Tourism;  Bracalente Manufacturing Group, China – Project Engineer Intern; VIVA Group, India – Construction Process Analyst Intern; Yerzhan Tatishev Foundation, Kazakhstan – Alumni Program Intern.
• Internships.com:  Recommend that your students go to Internships.com and browse through hundreds of international internships. The site also gives helpful information to students, such as long- and short-term benefits, language requirements, resources, and help with applications. The deadlines for international Summer 2012 internships are fast approaching, so explore new global opportunities with your students.

Susan Sandberg

A recent business story in The New York Times featured a profile of the CEO of Manischewitz. Part of his success story included his internship that turned into a job with a group of cheese producers and the rest is history. Another positive story revolves around a woman who interned at Rolls-Royce and was recruited to stay on and promoted to project manager. To leverage internships into jobs, your interns need to make sure that they receive proper documentation for their hard work.

Such tangible proof of performance will strengthen their resumes and help them transition internships into jobs or better internships.

• Ensure that the intern supervisor fills out the final evaluation form, which you may have to provide. Both you and each student should receive a copy of the final evaluation form. If the intern has performed well, he /she should ask the supervisor to write a letter of recommendation, complimenting the student on his/her work, on the company letterhead.
• Collect documentation. If the intern supervisor has sent you weekly evaluations that are positive, you might want to make copies of those evaluations and present them in a folder to your student intern, so he/she can use them to get other internships or positions.
• Advise interns to obtain fresh copies of every item on which they have worked. Your student intern may have contributed to a report or document that will not be finalized until after the internship is over. When that report or document appears, encourage your interns to request a copy and leave a forwarding address.
• Suggest that your students ask other employees with whom they’ve worked to also write recommendation letters. If your intern has been part of a team, perhaps the team leader would be willing to write a recommendation for the intern. Or if your student has moved around to different departments, the intern might ask various department heads to write recommendations.
• Offer to help your student intern collate these materials into a professional presentation. You might have a handsome school binder or folder that you could give to the intern. Recommend that your student intern also include information, such as annual reports, newsletters, etc. about the company to demonstrate interest in the company.
• Remind your students to update their resumes with the achievements from their internships. They may need to have some help in reorganizing the resume, such as understanding which older items to delete in order to make space for the newer material. If they utilize LinkedIn, they might want to add new contacts from their internships to facilitate networking.

Susan Sandberg

Students are already lining up for spring and even summer internships, so it’s time to acknowledge that elephant in the room—the controversy over unpaid internships. As a career services professional, it’s up to you to counterbalance the negative effects of the book Intern Nation or news stories, such as the students who sued their internship company last summer for compensation.  Here are a few ways to correct any inaccurate impressions and reassure your students that unpaid internships can be excellent investments in their futures:

• Cite student experiences:  Students may be more likely to believe other students who reaffirm that their unpaid internships were valuable experiences. You could share a recent article by a student in the Simmons Voice at Simmons College. “It can be difficult to see the value in unpaid work, especially in such a chaotic economy, but internships hold value for both the intern and those who employ them. . . Internship programs make it possible for smart, hardworking college students or graduates to learn about the field of work that they are hoping to enter, while making it possible for businesses to hire them with no salary and give them the smaller jobs that paid employees might scoff at.”  Ask experienced students at your own school to testify to the value of their unpaid internships to incoming interns, supporting your professional viewpoint.
• Cite statistics:  A study by Aerotek, a leading staffing provider, reports that 57 percent of adults would recommend an internship to make getting a post-graduate job easier. Furthermore, 55 percent of those who held internships found their current job through networking, according to a recent article by columnist Dan Schawbel in Metro US. Impress upon your students the huge number of choices in unpaid internships. For example, Internships.com currently offers 148,865 positions from 27,598 companies in 6,688 cities in 50 states. The majority of these internships is unpaid but is often with major companies that match your students’ interests. Remind your students that an unpaid internship helps them learn new skills and maximizes their networking opportunities and is worth more than a paid internship that may not further a student’s career.
• Cite resume benefits:  Resumes are more important than ever since the resume is the tool that usually gets a student an interview and then an offer for an internship or a job. The competition among resumes is fierce, especially since technology means every position can receive hundreds of emailed resumes. Most student resumes, especially for freshmen and sophomores, rely on part-time, menial jobs, college activities, or even high school accomplishments. Rather than spending time searching for a paid internship, a student would benefit more by taking unpaid internships and adding them to his/her resume. After a few unpaid internships, a student can drop the fast-food entries and add impressive professional experience with reputable organizations that will lead to more interviews and ultimately to better internships and eventually to paying jobs.