The conventional view of internship is changing. Money takes a back seat for most of the students when it comes to a good job-profile in a company. After all, experience counts in the job market. There is no denying the fact that internship provides a competitive edge. In an Indian job scenario where employers are ‘sceptical’ of a fresher and hesitant to hire him, internship would be a great exercise for a student in confidence-building and in getting into the groove, faster.
In fact, it’s a win-win situation for both the student-intern and the company, the former gets a valuable practical experience and a platform for a career path, the latter gets the best talent in the form of innovation and intellect. Companies in India view internship as a recruiting tool to ‘test-drive’ potential employees. It offers employers a window to observe or assess the potential recruit's skills and cultural fit with the company, before making a full-time offer and minimising the risk of getting a wrong hire. Research shows that 85 per cent of companies worldwide use internships and similar experiential education programmess to recruit for their full-time work forces.
On the other hand, college students see internship as one of the best ways to gain some experience before they start their career. The experiences become the building blocks of their professional development and future career. Needless to say, internships have had a facelift due to the growing competition on the one hand and proficiency of young students on the other. With various internship options on offer, paid opportunities are on the rise in search of the best possible candidate. Some new companies give weightage to the value of raw talent and nurture interns. This way they can not only groom tailor-made staff but keep them for a long period.
Do up your resume: Some student-interns prefer to work with established companies in order to have an impressive résumé, others go for start-up companies for the sake of closer attention. Students are benefitted in terms of confidence-building, experience, skill growth, perspective, supervision, professional connections, academic credit, and earnings. Obviously, the students don’t have any work-experience. So, those planning to enter the permanent work force should complement their academic preparation with a range of other experiences, such as community service, undergraduate research experiences, sports participation, membership in pre-professional organizations, and internships.
A company’s internship programme offers students the chance to learn by doing in a setting where they are supervised by a work-place professional, and have the opportunity to achieve their own learning goals, without the responsibilities of permanent employees.
Get a mentor: An internship also offers the students a chance to work with somebody who can become a mentor - not only during internship, but also throughout their career. Interns are generally considered a critical part of the team and, in many ways; they are viewed as newly hired full-time employee. Therefore, from the get-go they may find themselves working on projects that directly impact users, designing the company’s social media strategy and taking charge of the marketing plan. This might seem something impossible at first, but they are able to gain confidence by knowing that they completed, and mastered, a set of practical, transferable tasks.
Useful websites: Getting to be an intern is not much of a problem with a number of portals offering opportunities to students. These portals do not charge students for registering, though they levy a fee on companies for posting their requirements.
With the vast talent pool available, enriched with innovative ideas, companies are going for the kill and benefitting in the process. They are looking for the right candidate for the right job. Good internship in a good company can help you get your dream job.
(The writer is Meenu Nathawat, HR Manager with TCYonline)