Are Internships worth it?

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm curious what people think of internships in general?

Just to put everyone on the same page, I'll give a general US-centric layout on what they are and how they work -

Spoiler :

Internships are either unpaid or paid stints at companies. They serve to give the workers experience and a feel for the company they work at and also give the company a chance to test the individuals out and see if they are a good fit and are also a source of cheap labor.

A couple of important things about internships in the US -

They are not mandatory in the vast majority of fields, the exceptions being the medical fields (doctors and nurses) and education (primary and secondary school teachers, maybe some professors in higher ed). I believe this is contrary to the way it works in many other countries where some sort of internship is required to graduate with say, an engineering degree.

Most internships in the US are not paid positions, excepting the medical and engineering fields, where nearly all of them are actually very-well paying.

In the US, most internships are over the summer, or are a summer+1 semester (and they are then called co-ops). This isn't universally true, as there are 'internships' that are completely outside of the educational system.

In the US, companies are required to pay interns if they are doing actual work. Many companies abuse the hell out of this and don't pay interns who are doing actual work.

Do you think internships or co-ops should be mandatory for certain fields? If so, which ones?

Should internships pay interns? If so, how much?

Do you think they are 'worth it', however you define that metric?


__________________________

I think engineering summer internships are definitely worth it. They pay, they give great experience and they usually lead to full-time offers at graduation. If taken over the summer, they don't even interfere with classes, so there isn't much reason not to take one if possible.

For other fields that don't pay, I am much less certain on the 'worth' of them. Despite US law prohibiting it, many firms use internships as cheap (i.e. free) labor and then don't actually hire the interns on full-time after their interning stint. I think that's an abusive practice and the government should do more to stop it.

I'm of mixed feelings when it comes to educational internships (student teaching). They don't pay and they are required to be done by most states law in order to become a certified teacher. On the other hand, they do quite often lead to job offers, so they aren't so clearly abusive.

 

[Kyriakos]

Worth it, if there is a prospect of getting paid work as a decently direct result of them. That is most of the reason i am giving library seminars. It is good for other things, but mostly for bio information.

 

[Zelig]

Unpaid internships generally aren't legal, and interns should take their "employers" to court for unpaid wages.

I don't really get the point of "internships" otherwise. When I was in school I just took jobs in my field over the summers. What's the point of labeling it an "internship" other than for lower pay?

 

[Tahuti]

Internships in general should be banned. Either completely hire them or don't.

That being said, it is a symptom of a larger problem in which too much people go to college.

 

[Leonel]

While I do believe internships should be paid to some extent, I found them extremely essential in advancing my career. The problem I was having when I was first starting out was that no one would hire me because I had little experience but I couldn't get experience if no one would hire me so I figured that I'd have to do an unpaid internship part time while doing another paying part time job. It also helped immensely that I still lived with my folks at the time and they supported me a lot.

Ultimately, I managed to scrap enough experience to actually get hired into a full time job and I don't think I would have gotten as far as I have without an unpaid internship.

 

[warpus]

I went through an internship program at university. For 5 and a half years, without any breaks, I'd do a term of school, a term of work, a term of school, a term of work, and repeat until degree.

The first awesome part about this program was that each work term I made enough money to pay for tuition, books, and a lot of rent and food, clothing, etc. for next school term. Not enough to cover everything, but it meant that I was only eligible for about $2-3k of loans a year or at most $1k per term. So basically at the end of school I didn't owe much in terms of student loans - a very manageable amount that I haven't really been noticing as it gets taken out of my bank account each month.

So that was awesome. What was also awesome was that the program I was in attracted companies from all around the world, including Bill Gates, who made an annual recruitment push at our school.. or at least his cronies did. Either way, silicon valley hired a lot of interns out of my school. Mind you I didn't end up with any of those cool jobs, the competition was insane and there were a lot of hyperintelligent (and anti-social and smelly and self-indulgent) geeks at the school who made it hard to get a job working at EA working on FIFA (I had an interview for this job but the competition was insane). Satellite interview with their Vancouver location was a really cool experience btw - especially with the 2-3 second lag.

In conclusion, my internship experience was good for 2 reasons:
- the pay was great and helped me pay for school bigtime
- the experience was invaluable

So I'm sort of for internships.. as long as they're paid. Unpaid internships are usually just a way for the company to exploit the student. If it's at a non-for-profit place then that seems warranted.. or if you're getting incredibly valuable experiences out of it. Then sure, but otherwise I'd probably be against it.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

It's worth it for the companies.

My co-op experience was certainly invaluable. I still count it as the best 8 months of my life. I don't know about making it mandatory, but someone who wants to excel in the lab should jump at the opportunity to get one.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't see how Zelig doesn't see any point whatsoever to internships.

So long as some people are taking them, they will have a leg up on most other job-seekers; so it behooves everyone to try and obtain one to maintain parity. And the experience is great - I have been told by several hirers in industry that those who had internships are many times more likely to get hired by those individuals than those who do not because they have had experience in industry doing real work. And if you can land an internship over summer, when it doesn't interfere with school, then why not?

I should be clear I think there is a big distinction between STEM internships and non-STEM internships. For one, STEM internships general pay and non-STEM usually don't, even when it is clearly illegal to do so. For non-STEM fields, I don't see much of a point in them unless you are reasonably certain of a job placement afterwards, which isn't always the case.

I have to say it's probably easiest in STEM fields for programmers to get internships and jobs. For one, it's relatively easy to pick up programming experience. You can do it on your own and many high schools (and definitely colleges) have programming courses, workshops and clubs. If you are an aspiring rocket scientist, well, good luck finding a satellite lab to putz around in while in high school. Oh and for sure, programmers can find work in just about any field, from healthcare to aerospace, so that also makes finding an internship or job easy as heck.

On exploitation -

Well, it's not so simple as to say that companies get the most out of it everytime. For one thing, most firms (that play by the rules) don't hire legions of cheap interns to do lots of work. It's common at least in my field for companies who are hiring to hire 5-15 full time engineers/programmers but only 1 or 2 interns. Even larger firms (like Boeing) hire very, very few interns compared to full timers. For another thing, the interns are themselves paid pretty well. I don't get paid as much as a full time engineer (by a long shot) but I get paid significantly more than entry level machine-shop workers. Another thing; interns don't usually work on critical assignments, they are assigned to do the kinds of things that distract the full time engineers - and even then, they can and do screw up. At least at my firm, there are things I'm not allowed to do thanks to previous interns that royally screwed up and cost the company a lot of money and headache. So it's not completely one-sided for the company.

And of course firms often hire interns hoping to be able to cheaply (compared to full-timers) train them to become full-time workers for them only for the intern to take that experience to the firms competition.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I've had a few internships, and I was paid for none of them. I wish I was, but I suppose I had nothing else to do or could do.

That said, I don't think any of my internship experiences were particularly bad, and taught me a few things about life here and there. The longest one I had was an intern for a local politician. Most of the work was kinda bureaucratic in nature, though I didn't mind; made friends with a couple of the workers; had a nice time.

These are all non-STEM internships, btw.

 

[downtown]

Like everything else related to jobs, job hunting, etc...the value of an internship depends on your labor market (the job you are looking for, your own skills and qualifications, your geography, etc). They can be invaluable, or a total ripoff.

I manage four interns in my current position, and I don't hire anybody who has not completed one (I hire and manage writers). In our industry, completing at least one internship is a requirement for full time employment virtually anywhere (both for market reasons, and bc the university experience does not prepare students 1:1 for the skills they need to be successful in a professional publishing setting). When I was in college, I completed three of them myself.

There are a lot of shady firms who skirt around the requirements for unpaid internships. These requirements are:

The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment.
The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.
The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff.
The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.
The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship.
The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

If a student can find an internship situation that meets these needs, and such experience is a *requirement* for entry into that field, then I'd say it is very much worth it. It may be worth it to the student even if these conditions are NOT met, if the internship can provide enough experience, or of a "name" to offset that. I think those internships are relatively rare though.

If you are entering a field where an internship is not a requirement for entry, or if you can make a lot more money just working, an internship may not have value. The value of those experiences will be very different for my industry (or several others), than it would be for say, Zelig or Warpus.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

Mind you I didn't end up with any of those cool jobs, the competition was insane and there were a lot of hyperintelligent (and anti-social and smelly and self-indulgent) geeks at the school who made it hard to get a job working at EA working on FIFA (I had an interview for this job but the competition was insane).

I am sure you can get a job in EA if you try now.

Competition in Ontario is particularly insane due to the amount of overqualified immigrants from Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Asia.

 

[DaveShack]

In my department, every successful new hire since me (myself included) has been an intern before going regular. I can't speak for those who came before me. I'm in software, where anyone can hack code but not all can do software engineering. The internship weeds out the minority who can't work within a process with a team.

We hire them the last 2 years of college, part time during school and full time during the summer. The pay is quite good (for college students) and overtime is paid if the assignment warrants it. There have only been a few who didn't work out, maybe 10% or so.

 

[tetley]

Depends on the field, and your financial means for getting through school. You might be better off just graduating a semester earlier and getting paid a regular salary during that time.

 

[Antilogic]

If your field has paid internships and co-ops available, especially during college, then I say take them. I worked in a quality assurance lab for three years during summer breaks and holidays, although I was technically hired part-time and not as an intern. More money, so that was good, and I still got the work experience to put on the resume.

I am really skeptical of unpaid internships, I would avoid those like the plague.

 

[Hygro]

I had one unpaid internship. It was great.

 

[Kennigit]

note: only US centric point of view

I'd be skeptic of unpaid internships since it's pretty much a lose lose

either you're going to be doing a lot of work and get paid nothing

or you're going to do nothing, and while it gives some experience on your resume, a competent hiring manager should be able to tell whether you did anything or not (which may or may not be relevant; if you can pass the HR screening to get to an interview, maybe it doesn't matter anyways). Now, it can still be very good and enjoyable, but my heavy heavy bias is towards low level technical knowledge and I see much more value in an internship with a specific project compared to a general-learning-in-the-office.

that said, I did not have an unpaid internship, and I do not know people with unpaid internships directly.

my advice for anyone would be to get a co-op (if you're caring about most effectiveness for your time, in terms of gainful employment after completion of a bachelor's degree).

and it's pretty easy to say "try to get an internship" but reality is much harder than that. However, I feel co-ops may be a bit easier to "get." I'm not saying a great co-op, but a co-op. Internships seem to be a little more ambiguous up-front with "what you'd get" or "likelihood to get the spot".

internships will advertise as competitve and seem to often end up going to company employee Jack's son's friend (who is qualified in the posting, but so are 50 other candidates that are never looked at).

or rather, internships and co-ops will come to career fairs, but I feel co-ops of "yeah we're looking for 1-3 students to pluck up for a co-op" will actually follow through with that rather than internships saying "well, we'll advertise ~15+ college career fairs but really only consider students from the college that is geographically near our office where the internship will take place".

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

Depends on the field, and your financial means for getting through school. You might be better off just graduating a semester earlier and getting paid a regular salary during that time.

I think the point is that it paves the road to a first job. Up here in Toronto, that can be tough due to the amount of skill immigrants.

 

[Zelig]

I don't see how Zelig doesn't see any point whatsoever to internships.

What's the point for society, not what's the point for hobbsyoyo.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

. At least at my firm, there are things I'm not allowed to do thanks to previous interns that royally screwed up and cost the company a lot of money and headache. So it's not completely one-sided for the company.

I usually blame co-ops first when anything goes wrong.

 

[Camikaze]

An 'unpaid internship' is a bit of a contradiction, at least here. Unpaid work purporting to be an internship would be illegal. Unless you're talking about a volunteer organisation or something, a business can't use student slave labour. Though I guess in practice that doesn't really stop them. You can have someone be around a workplace and not pay them, but not if they're doing work for which you'd otherwise pay someone.

An internship is very much a thing to do for people in my primary degree, though a common alternative is an actual proper part-time job. There are quite a limited number of internships available, though, so even though it's considered a thing to do, it's not entirely necessary.

In Germany it seems that everyone, no matter their degree, does an internship or two. It may even be compulsory. I find this rather bizarre.