Internships are very important for any student’s life; as practical exposure provided during internships help understand bridges between industry need and academic curriculum. To start with let’s understand what an internship is.
Internships are short-term jobs, intended to provide entry level industry exposure to students. Interns generally spend their time by assisting their mentors in relevant tasks & research details, meanwhile learning practical aspects of business, getting exposure to industry, making connections and developing their own hard & soft skills.
Now as you have basic idea about what is an internship, your mind might be dwindling should you do one? Answer is “Hell, Yeah”. Just think about it, as an intern you will be working alongside a person who has great work experience and getting hands on experience while you assist.
Secondly it also helps you to understand what “you would want to do later as a job”. Especially in today’s scenario when jobs are demanding very specific and deep skills it’s important to understand what you may not want to do as your job. Internships help you understand different job responsibilities and roles in a live corporate environment.
Third, and equally important reason to pursue an internship is that Nowadays internships are highly common and most recruiters looking forward to see at least one internship on your resume, so that they can gauge your interest level in their industry.
Now as its clear why a career oriented students should look forward and pursue an internship.
Let’s try to figure out few pointers to select a good internship.
- Opportunity to Learn: Any good internship should give an opportunity to learn, if given a chance would you choose a paid but data entry internship or would you choose learning oriented marketing internship which is not a paid internship. Choice is clear if goal is clear, in my opinion, purpose of internship is to learn and generate experience. A good learning internship will get you much better financial prospects later then the low paying mundane internship would bring in today.
- Impact Factor: By Impact factor we mean how the task would get you involved, and how will it be impacting your experience. This point is comparatively subjective and depends on what make you curios, as for some people a big company / brand name internship will get them excited and for others a small company internship which will give them some key responsibilities would make the case. You should gauge your inclination and choose accordingly
- Differentiator: Internship should make you stand apart from the crowd, for obvious reasons when you choose your internship you want to learn and most of the time, make your career in chosen field. If you did what every other person did for a summer internship then it doesn’t make you special but if you have pursued and chosen your internship and did created a differentiators for yourself then it became easier for recruiters to choose you don’t you think it’s a good idea.
- The Mentor: As an intern you will be spending time with your mentor more than anyone else, and it’s important to gather some details about your mentor so that you can think through of what you want to learn and focus on during your internship time. Generally Mentors also take these points in consideration but it’s always good to be prepared.
- Essential Skill Mapping: If you want to make your career in sales then an internship in financial sector doesn’t make sense for you, Right? Let’s take this example a bit deeper, If you want to make career in FMCG sales then corporate sales experience may be helpful but FMCG sale experience as an intern would be much better. So ensure that your skills are mapped to your career goals and its better if your internship choice gives you practical exposer of Essential Skill set required for your dream career.
I hope these points are helpful for you to choose a perfect internship
All The best.
