The internship is a rite of passage for every college student. As I discussed last semester, there is an ongoing debate as to whether interning is a learning experience for the student, or if it is merely an opportunity for a company to exploit the naïve newbie in the workforce. Is it legitimate, or is it essentially slave labor in all but name? Some people emerge with a stronger skillset in the field they intend to pursue. Others come out confident in their ability to make a perfect cup of joe, but not much else. Often times, the most difficult aspect of internships is not the work itself, but rather finding the position.
I have been thinking ahead since the summer. I now know, by heart, when companies are posting positions. I also happen to know that July 4 is a Saturday, which will put a major dent in my Independence Day sales shopping schedule.
For me, the internship search starts now. Scratch that, it started the day after I got back home from my program in Israel. I had just finished summer 2014’s internship, and I was already moving on to my plans for summer 2015. Shockingly enough, I was not premature in my thinking. Finance and banking internships post analyst positions early. Barely a month into the new semester, I am inundated with applications. Did I mention that many deadlines are in less than two weeks, with some having already passed? Blink and all these opportunities are gone! This clearly mimics the fast paced nature of these types of internships as well as their respective corporations. My stress at this point is therefore not due to upcoming midterms, but rather from having to write numerous cover letters.
Going around the room with 80 pairs of eyes staring at a Post-It on you that says your biggest goal for the next year is both empowering and humbling. It was a moment of intense self-introspection.
I am not the only one who recognizes the significance of landing a good internship this summer. On my program in Israel, we were all asked to identify goals we had for the upcoming year. Though it was only July, multiple peers of mine wrote about hoping to land an internship at a top-ranked company. They, like myself, were juniors (with some seniors) in college who were aware of the significance of getting a good internship for the break prior to entering senior year. This three-month span is colloquially, and ominously, dubbed The Summer. An internship at this time is crucial because it could pave the way for potential job offers post graduation. Guaranteeing a position once you finish senior year is both a confidence booster and a relief. Flashback to a similar situation: senior year in high school when people applied, and were accepted, to college early decision. Same thing now, except your livelihood is on the line.
The friend who made this innocent question was pre-med. Those pursuing the pre-medicine track do not intern, but rather either volunteer at hospitals, research in labs, or shadow doctors in specific fields of interest. I notice that many pre-med students at Queens College scorn business majors for having taken the” easier, more corrupt” route in their studies. Little do they realize that they will need basic business competency and financial literacy skills in order to succeed once they start working as doctors.
When I told a friend recently that I could not travel abroad because I need to get an internship, his blunt response surprised me: Another one? Thinking that my assiduous quest to get another internship was impressive, peers and professors alike had never questioned me. I am accustomed to receiving unending support, sympathy, and praise as I toiled through the application process. I was always under the impression that the more internships I had, the better. Right?
Not quite. My friend’s words resonating in my mind, I began to explore the idea that there is a marginal benefit to internships. In economics, many concepts are premised on thinking at the margin. This means that we look at the impact that one additional unit has. In short, for every one extra X, how much of Y will result? (For a particularly relevant example: for every additional hour of sleep I get, how much more awake will I be the next morning? If I already got 10 hours of sleep, then one more hour will be unsubstantial. If, more likely, I only sleep 5 hours, then an extra hour of sleep will allow me to be far more refreshed in the morning)
By looking at internships from this perspective, we can better understand the effectiveness of the institution as well as its overall necessity.
Most freshmen get their first internship through family connections. How much they learn and grow is all dependent on how much effort they are willing to put into the experience.
For the very first internship one lands, the marginal benefit is tremendous. It is by far the most difficult one to get: you are coming in with no experience and few skills. Ironically enough, having these two traits is a boon. Because you enter as a tabula rasa, the entire internship is a learning experience. Thus, the marginal benefit of the internship, by virtue of it being your first, is huge.
Even the second internship allows for a noticeable marginal benefit. By this point, you are building on the skills you gained from the first one, as well as from what you learned in your relevant coursework. It is important to note, though, that this experience is not as substantial as the first. Since you are no longer a complete novice, the amount you learned, while significant, is less than what you gained from your very first internship.
As you have more and more internships, you marginally benefit less and less. Not that you do not gain from the experience-rather, you simply gain less.
After this point, the learning curve plummets. Marginally, that is after every additional internship, you gain less and less. There is, what I like to call, a diminishing marginal benefit to internships. This is a positive trend in the sense that it reflects how much more knowledgeable and skilled you are, and that there is less for you to learn. But this also means that all the extra internships you have are not necessarily so important. After each one, you marginally gain less from each additional experience. Unless the experience is extremely unique, such as an internship abroad, it might not be worthwhile. Thus, while people compulsively intern at many different places, they are often doing so to fill their resumes. They forget the real purpose of an internship, which is to learn about the intended field you wish to pursue, and to see if it is a good match for you.
I think that the exception to this trend, though, is for internships in The Summer. Entering senior year, students are not trying to accumulate more experience, nor are they dipping their toes into new fields. Their sole purpose is to execute the skills they have been sharpening over the years, in order to prove themselves as worthy potential employees to the company. The nature of this internship is therefore entirely different than those of prior years. Rather than being a resume filler, it is a legitimate stepping stone to post graduation employment.
In today’s super competitive job market, one has to differentiate oneself from other applicants. Nowadays, it is almost taken for granted that a college student has an internship before applying for a job. Consequently, people try to accumulate multiple internships in order to stand out among competitors. AKA your friends. I firmly believe that having “only” a few internships that teach you valuable skills and lessons is much more worthwhile than having many “fluff” ones. Remember: Do not be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Stick to what you know by perfecting your craft, and companies will recognize that you are an asset to the firm. And with that, I bid you adieu, as I am off to fill out my next application!
