how much do internships really matter?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In business, internships during the summer between the junior and senior year are critical and often lead to full time job offers at the end of the summer before starting the senior year.

If you're targeting a top tier Investment Bank, P/E, Wealth Management, Consulting, or Tech start ups, then an internship from a top-tier targeted school is the best way to get in the door. Often, it's the only way. You may still get recruited from outside of top tier schools but it's exponentially harder.

Family and friend connections may get you an interview but you still have to compete. Where these connections are helpful is they know how the interviews and case studies work, and can prep you.

It's harder to get an internship than a full time offer because there are far few internships role compared to full-time.

-Current Campus Recruiter for Management Consulting

If the connection comes from MD, CFO, or COO, you will be hired because the people who interview you have to report to those honchos. The last thing you want to do is to offend them.

Even when you attend those target schools, unless you have connections, the probability of getting hired at those places is also very low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And all this time I thought you just had to be a DEI candidate to secure a job.

Ha. Not anymore. Huge backlash on that. Read the recent Bloomberg article….

Sarcasm my friend. Hookups have always been key. DEI was just the trendy scapegoat.

[Anonymous]

As someone who has hired a lot of interns, internships are helpful if for no other reason then a college kid is not blindsided by the 9-5 (even in today's telework world) of an actual job. The difference between kids who worked or had an internship of any kind, related or not the eventual job, is very noticeable compared to kids whose parents told them school was their job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Internships on college are critical. Does not matter how you got it. I am hiring for an entry level position and just got a resume from a 2024 grad at the same top 25 school my DS attends (he is a rising senior). She is in the same major and has a nearly perfect GPA. I was shocked that she was still looking for job. Then i looked closer at her resume. While she has GREAT on campus activities and a great GPA, she has only had one tangentially related internship. By contrast, my DS will soon start his third internship directly in his major field. I guess I’ll eat my words next May if he doesn’t have a job either, but to me, that’s the difference. He looked at her resume and said it’s a problem that she has as many bullet points under her sorority leadership than the one actual work experience. He’s right.

I am in recruiting and absolutely yes, good consistent and related internships can trump being in a more well known school.

It is a very challenging job market out there even for grads with multiple internships. My DS graduates in May '24 with a degree in CS and three CS internships, after his freshman, sophomore and junior, and he still has no offer.

This is very scary to hear! Do you have any guesses on why your DS hasn't found a job? Grades, looking for too high a salary, etc? This is very worrisome

DP but it’s because we’ve had years of telling kids the “right” path is CS and there is an oversupply of new grads at the exact time big tech is shedding 1000s of jobs

[Anonymous]

I work in a STEM field and I'd be quite hesitant to hire someone without internships, lab work, or co-op experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Internships on college are critical. Does not matter how you got it. I am hiring for an entry level position and just got a resume from a 2024 grad at the same top 25 school my DS attends (he is a rising senior). She is in the same major and has a nearly perfect GPA. I was shocked that she was still looking for job. Then i looked closer at her resume. While she has GREAT on campus activities and a great GPA, she has only had one tangentially related internship. By contrast, my DS will soon start his third internship directly in his major field. I guess I’ll eat my words next May if he doesn’t have a job either, but to me, that’s the difference. He looked at her resume and said it’s a problem that she has as many bullet points under her sorority leadership than the one actual work experience. He’s right.

I am in recruiting and absolutely yes, good consistent and related internships can trump being in a more well known school.

It is a very challenging job market out there even for grads with multiple internships. My DS graduates in May '24 with a degree in CS and three CS internships, after his freshman, sophomore and junior, and he still has no offer.

This is very scary to hear! Do you have any guesses on why your DS hasn't found a job? Grades, looking for too high a salary, etc? This is very worrisome

DP but it’s because we’ve had years of telling kids the “right” path is CS and there is an oversupply of new grads at the exact time big tech is shedding 1000s of jobs

+10000 so this. I have been saying this for a year now. The CS job market is not sustainable at the level it was at when these kids decided that it was the way to six figure salaries right out of school. There are simply more candidates than jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who has hired a lot of interns, internships are helpful if for no other reason then a college kid is not blindsided by the 9-5 (even in today's telework world) of an actual job. The difference between kids who worked or had an internship of any kind, related or not the eventual job, is very noticeable compared to kids whose parents told them school was their job.

I hate to burst your bubble but my experience is opposite. I studied CS in college and it was hell for me. When I graduated in 2010 and got my first job in cyber security, it was so much easier than college. I couldn't believe they paid me 100K+ to do this job. I had to stay up so many nights in college to finish CS projects. I didn't have to spend anytime after 5pm for my work. Even now as a SME in cyber security for DHS, I stop working after 3:30pm and get paid 290K/year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in a STEM field and I'd be quite hesitant to hire someone without internships, lab work, or co-op experience.

However, you don't get to make that decision. Many times, those decisions are made by someone above your pay grade. That's why networking and relationships matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your kids should be getting their own internships when they are in college. If they have to rely on daddy, they are doing it wrong.

We are talking HS. senior year the kids do internships. Like NIH or something

This is absolutely not the norm. A few kids do internships senior year in HS. Most are focusing on classes, ECs, and service industry jobs at that stage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In business, internships during the summer between the junior and senior year are critical and often lead to full time job offers at the end of the summer before starting the senior year.

If you're targeting a top tier Investment Bank, P/E, Wealth Management, Consulting, or Tech start ups, then an internship from a top-tier targeted school is the best way to get in the door. Often, it's the only way. You may still get recruited from outside of top tier schools but it's exponentially harder.

Family and friend connections may get you an interview but you still have to compete. Where these connections are helpful is they know how the interviews and case studies work, and can prep you.

It's harder to get an internship than a full time offer because there are far few internships role compared to full-time.

-Current Campus Recruiter for Management Consulting

If the connection comes from MD, CFO, or COO, you will be hired because the people who interview you have to report to those honchos. The last thing you want to do is to offend them.

Even when you attend those target schools, unless you have connections, the probability of getting hired at those places is also very low.

Agree with almost everything you wrote except you don't get an automatic pass at my firm. If you're on the bubble, we will give you the benefit of doubt and accept you. If you're unqualified, you get a polite reject.

The probability of getting hire is low because we get 200+ resumes for 50 shortlisted candidates resulting in ~15 offers for 10 spots. Those few getting offers are scrutinized by their peers and by our employees. If we hire someone unqualified purely because of their connections, we jeopardize our credibility and affects morale. Plus, I may have to work with that person on a project and that would suck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids got internships on their own with their own merits.
It boost their confidence and is a better way in every angle for long run vs daddy taking care of them.
However, I guess it's still better than nothing.

I’m the one whose DH got their daughter’s Freud an internships and I will say the kids were worthy. There are tons of kids with great resumes out there. It helps to have someone get yours to the top (just as it does in full time employment). Sometimes the AI does not do a good filtering job and good candidates are filtered out or HR is filtering and does not understand exactly what some of the experience is. When I hire, I like getting recommendations from good employees because I know they won’t recommend someone who will harm their reputation. It’s the same here. Do companies hire kids without an in? Of course but the in can help get over the resume screen hump or give an extra bit of confidence because most folks won’t push for someone who would not make them look good.

It’s awesome that your kid got in without this but don’t do them the disservice of believing these things don’t matter. Right or wrong, it’s how it is done much of the time. The system is crowded and broken. FWIW, I would never hire someone just because they are someone’s friend or child. They have to be good. The connection just gets them an interview.

+1 connections help with interviews. I used to hire a lot of interns (our program got cut with budget cuts) and would always interview someone who had a personal referral and that alone was a huge boost out of a pool of 100+ resumes. But, once you were in the interview pool you were on equal footing with everyone else. Certainly from the stories here, there are people who will give stronger preference to the referred candidate but that was not our company culture and no exec would ever expect me to hire their kid.

DS had a couple personal-referral interviews last year as a sophomore and they didn't turn into offers. I would guess because those companies had more qualified juniors/seniors that he was competing against. He'd had a post-freshman year internship at a family friend's company and could have gone back but they could only offer him about 15 yrs per week and he needed to make more money. Ended up doing a regular retail job. But also did major-related work on campus, hit the ground running in junior year and had a great (no connections) internship set by December.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who has hired a lot of interns, internships are helpful if for no other reason then a college kid is not blindsided by the 9-5 (even in today's telework world) of an actual job. The difference between kids who worked or had an internship of any kind, related or not the eventual job, is very noticeable compared to kids whose parents told them school was their job.

+1 as an intern manager I never want to be someone's first job. Most of the rising-senior summer interns we hire (big brand company) had a prior internship, usually at a small company. I've never hired a rising junior or younger.

We also have interns year round and the competition for Fall and Spring semester internships is much, much less so if a student is having trouble finding something for summer and has the flexibility to do a gap semester they may find better opportunities that way. More often that not our Fall/Spring interns are new grads who are happy to have a short-term experience while continuing to search for a permanent job. And our team is happy to help them with resume advice and connections in our field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In business, internships during the summer between the junior and senior year are critical and often lead to full time job offers at the end of the summer before starting the senior year.

If you're targeting a top tier Investment Bank, P/E, Wealth Management, Consulting, or Tech start ups, then an internship from a top-tier targeted school is the best way to get in the door. Often, it's the only way. You may still get recruited from outside of top tier schools but it's exponentially harder.

Family and friend connections may get you an interview but you still have to compete. Where these connections are helpful is they know how the interviews and case studies work, and can prep you.

It's harder to get an internship than a full time offer because there are far few internships role compared to full-time.

-Current Campus Recruiter for Management Consulting

Thank you for the insight.

[Anonymous]

Internships really matter but it doesn't matter much where you work -- just get some experience.

[Anonymous]

In addition to internships, and as help to getting that 1st internship, students should also be doing things on-campus to build their resumes. Substantive projects in a major classes can be listed on the resume. Undergraduate research (also helpful in getting to know a professor better for a good reference). Some colleges offer on-campus internships that might be related to a major. Competitive teams for things like robotics, data analysis, engineering. And, ideally your major would provide an opportunity to do a capstone project with a real company.