After all, can an internship actually help with the unending seeking of one’s dream job?
All students decide to go to university for various reasons which are often different, depending on each person. However, it is important to admit that everybody knows that gaining knowledge from a university course and the certificate that comes with it gives them a significant opportunity to get a good job.
Indeed, students spend years of their youth studying to get the skills to carry out their work in the best way possible. Nevertheless, even if universities give you the knowledge, they do not assure the experience that any workplace offers. Because of this, all courses always allow doing an internship through partnerships with companies.
In the 21st century, the work market is truly complex and it seems as if a single or a double degree isn’t enough. Indeed, it has become usual for students to choose to take semesters or summer months between their studies in exchange for part-time jobs and/or internships to bulk up their CVs. Further, although they are not usually considered part of your course, internships can be accredited by professional training organizations, which means students could count it as a recognized industry qualification, in addition to their degree.
Nonetheless, students sometimes are not aware of what an internship is or how it works.
From my perspective,
internships are considered a fundamental step for any student. In my university, people wish to have the best work experience possible either during the course or at the end of it.
Actually, the choice of taking this “break” from university to get an internship does not depend on either the students’ course or if they are undergraduate or postgraduate students; I have a lot of friends who:
- have done their internship experience between the end of the undergraduate and postgraduate phase;
- And who have used their summer breaks between the academic years.
In particular, one of my flatmates, who just finished his first year as I did, told me that he was going to start an internship from the middle of June until the end of the summer. This makes people understand that the UK universities’ breaks between the years are meant to be this long precisely for using it for internships.
Based on this,
it is fundamental to understand what an internship actually is:
- It can be defined as a professional learning experience that offers real work to the student, which is related to their field of study and career.
- This experience gives students a great opportunity to learn new skills for career development, and, on the other hand, helps companies by giving them a lot of “fresh” employers that bring ideas and energy.
Let’s head straight to the point, though, and understand how this system works:
- it can be scheduled as either part-time or full-time and is required to include no more than 25% of duties, orient students to the organization and assignments, and help them to achieve any kind of goal.
- It also offers feedback on students’ work to make universities–and students themselves–aware of their abilities and potential.
- This period of internship is supposed to have a minimum of 120 hours and is usually scheduled at 10 hours a week during the spring and the summer.
Unlike the other student-work experiences such as placement years, students will join a specific team depending on their field and will be asked to work as hard as a normal employee.
Internships are meant to allow students to gain skills and experiences in their chosen field of study. For instance, all students can have their own mentor who gives them any kind of guidance, feedback, and models; they can develop their contacts and be introduced to other employees where they can go for questions in the future.
As I said before, internships are relevant to your field of study and to what your job career will be about. Indeed, it is fundamental that students only apply for internships related to their field and that they have an interest in. In the UK, students can get one by speaking to their UK university’s careers service or reaching out to potential places on social media by using websites such as LinkedIn to discuss any kind of program companies provide. Thirdly, another solution would be searching specific internship websites such as Milkround and Career Center.
Moreover, it is important to specify that, in the UK, most interns are considered workers, which means that they are surely paid at least the minimum wage for the usual students’ age range (under £20,000 a year pro rata.)
In conclusion, my advice is to find and exploit any offer of internship possible because it will allow you to be a step forward compared to the other students by being more experienced with the work market, which is a world really hard to understand even for adults. Do not allow yourself to ignore this part of academic life; having experience, failing, and learning when we are young is fundamental because this is the time to do it.