mattistotle

You guys are over estimating the importance of the "learning relevant experience" factor of the first internship.

First off, in order to get better internships and to increase your chance of getting a good job, you need to do bad internships to load your resume. If you've only folded clothes your whole life, a prospective employers has no ability to guage your ability to work in an office environment, and doesnt know if you'll hate it and quit in 2 weeks.

ESPECIALLY in Media the connections and prior internships aren't only important, but they are one of the most important factors in getting future employment.

Same goes for finance.

samonite16

Matistotle is right. Everyone here is underestimating how difficult it is to find a 'rewarding internship experience.' In my experience, all the 'cool' internships where you do interesting work and meet interesting contacts go to people who already have some experience under their belt. You can't just get good grades for two years and then expect to intern at google or microsoft or wherever. You have to build up your resume with crappy internships where the main job is 'data entry' or some variant. These internships are by no means fun but they're not 'soul crushing.' For whatever reason, boring, low paying, borderline exploitive internships are part of the game, so go do one.

noct

mattistotle/samonite16:

I agree with you. I didn't say that it is easy to find a rewarding internship and I agree that any experience will help--notice how I said that my first internship was boring office work. Even though I wanted to be elsewhere, I knew that it would help me later.

For what it's worth though, the two people I mentioned in my last post both had never worked a real job or had internships prior to this summer. They had other things on their resumes. One had excellent grades and went to a little-know but well respected school. The other (Google) has a < 2.8 GPA and goes to a big state university--and before anyone says anything he has no connections to Google. They both had other things on their resumes like well respected awards and both has excellent portfolios of work done for school--code and engineering projects. The point is that if you are able to demonstrate that you have good skills there is no need to do a resign yourself to having a boring/bad internship your first year. Sure those are better than doing nothing, but if you work hard it's possible to land a good internship the first time around.

originaloog

I do not totally agree with mattistotle because he makes to broad a generalization. There are other factors which would lead companies to hire interns for high level internship positions. Our son got his internship this summer because of undergrad research he has been involved in since soph year and a regional competition in which his team took first prize. The fact that he spent the previous summer working with one of his profs on an OS development project gratis probably helped a lot too.

In fact he was fortunate that the competition results came after he had emailed his resume for the internship. In his phone interviews he was able to have relative lengthy discussions about the game development project-ie story development, graphic streaming issues, time complexity factors, programming/algorithm tools utilized, etc.

As a result, he was assigned relatively high level development assignments from day 1 and the last few days of his internship he was actually training a full time employee on the portion of the project he was assigned toward the end of his stint(something called scripting).

It was a really tremendous internship experience for him and one he got with no other internship experience on the resume.

4321234

it depends what kind of internship you're doing. many people doing programming, computers, or in the technical area usually find their internships rewarding. people nowadays value technology, so even if the person isn't learning much, they're still getting paid a lot. and their experience would be different than a person working for a radio station.

personally, i think being an intern for a smaller company is better than working for a bigger company, even if their name is more known. i used to work for a radio station, where people's eyes would spark and get really excited when i tell them i'm working there. but all i ever did was file, copy and paste things on the computer, and browse the web. they have even told me to just surf the web before. everybody was too busy with their own work. i had to go to them for work... not the other way around. i did get paid here, but i felt a little cheated since i didn't learn anything.

now i'm at a small publishing firm. nobody has heard of them, but they've been around for 18 years. lots of rich experience they have. they only have 5 real employers, and really only 3 people who come in on a daily basis. but they get lots of interns. since they're so small, i get to work directly with the editor. it's real close knitted, and i learn a lot from them. i even get office meetings. and they actually give me work that somewhat relates to the title i got. (marketing). the title i got at the radio station was student assistant producer or whatever. titles are crap. anyway, i don't get paid at my current internship, but i feel like i work there since it's so small and up close.

malerbam

i suggest going to a college that has co-ops, u still get the experience only diff is u get paid more

eva10127

Internship is about getting the experience. Money shouldn't be a big factor. If you don't do it, there's plenty out there willing to take the job. Either way, if you take the job paid or not paid, it will polish your resume for the future.

mattistotle

Always pick big companies over small companies unless the small companies give something tangible (series 7 license, chance of full time hire, extraordinary network, bloomberg). If you work for a small company you may get greater experience, but you will have a harder time landing an interview/job/better internship anyways.

The reason for this is that many HR recruiters just assume that internships at bigger companies are better/more exclusive (which is true a lot of time, since it has become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy - almost everyone aims for a major company, so thus they have the strongest applicant pool)

Second reason is its much harder to lie if you work at a major company. If you say you did operation at MS, or wealth management at Citi, IBD in GS, programming at Google, etc...HR can easily derive what you have done. If its a smaller company, its very easy to lie....you're dad could own the company, job title might not match responsibilities, etc. Sure it's possible for them to check up on this, but why bother, they have 1000's of resumes.

OriginalOOG, I'm pretty sure the difference between an exclusive research opportunity and a summer job at Abercrombie are fairly distinct (especially since the research seems to be applicable to his future job) , and you are really making a strawman arguement against what I said.

originaloog

mattistotle, I was merely responding to your unqualified statement, "First off, in order to get better internships and to increase your chance of getting a good job, you NEED to do bad internships to load your resume." By citing an example in answer to such a statement is hardly making a strawman arguement.

I have been in higher education for more than 30 years and I could give you hundreds of examples where our students have gotten outstanding engineering internships w/o prior internship experience. In fact it has been the rule rather than the exception because most engineering students get that first internship between jr and senior year due to skill set and specialization factors, though more are making the leap as following soph year recently.

I also disagree with your generalizations about internships in large and small companies. Both excellent and poor internships can be found at large and small companies. It all depends on the project interns are assigned to and the level of responsibility companies are willing to give their interns. In our department it is not uncommon for internships at smaller engineering consulting firms to be far better that those at the likes of B&V or M&E or other internationals.

Your comment about employers lying is merely silly and insofar as you are "merely" a NYU student, we will excuse you for such a comment.

ahoo2u

Internships = experience in your field
Internships = chance to meet professionals, get professional references
Internships = looks good on your resume
Internships = looks good on scholarhip applications
Internships = college credit
Internships = better chance for another internship, paid work, or part time job
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Internship = unpaid, consider it 'volunteer', or low paid
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Weigh your choices:
Internship with all the advantages above or
Summer or part-time work as server/bar-tender/mall work/other office job
$6-12/hr
What will get you further ahead in the long run?

If alternative is a good paying job that will help pay the big bills - go for it.

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Also some of the relevant answers above vary with your intended area of future employment. In some areas of study, internships may not be of importance, your degree and skill might be all you need.

Other super competative fields, media, broadcasting, government, public policy, non-profits, financials...internships, even the sacrificial unpaid ones answering phones to get in the door - are almost a right-of-passage. 'Working-your-way-up' seems to be on all the sucessful bios.

ahoo2u

If your graduating from HPY or Ivy in economic/technical/professional etc...you'll get a good job at a good place

If you're graduating from 'local state U' in economic/technical/professional etc, then climbing the ladder from beginner internship (or co-op) to impressive internship might be well worth the sacrifice and investment.

Think stategy.

ahoo2u

I totally agree with Originaloog - one doesn't always have to start at the bottom.
Some lucky students are in schools with astute department advisors and a programs that help students obtain outstanding, highly-regarded, 'to-die-for' internships.
Unfortuately, I don't think assistance with obtaining desirable internships exists universally, nevertheless some schools rightfully boast and web-publish their students' internship successes.