The Right Internship?
In writing the second portion of the Learning Plan, we had to come up with several goals for ourselves. One of my goals was to get a good job immediately after college. This job had to be representative of my desired career path. In the Learning Plan, I stated that one step I would take towards achieving this goal was through summer internships.
Not only are summer internships an important part of getting a job after college, but they are a good way to make sure that one’s desired career path fits with one’s personality and interests. However, can one really be sure that the internship he or she accepts is actually related to what he or she wants to do? I ask this because this is exactly what happened to me this past summer. I accepted an internship that I thought was similar to the Wall Street-type jobs that I think I would like to pursue such as financial analysis. I made this assumption based on the job description I was given which while it did not actually lie about the job, was extremely misleading and left many of the details open to interpretation. I suppose you could say that I saw what I wanted to see. It turned out that the job was nothing more than mindless grunt work that helped the company’s clients perform financial analysis and/or make investment decisions. My job was to compile the information as opposed to actually doing anything with it, and not once did I actually come into contact with someone whose job was even remotely similar to what I was looking for. It was extremely disappointing and left me no closer to knowing if I was making the right choice for a career.
Fortunately for me this internship was after my freshman year of college; I have two more summers to get it right and really test the waters, but what about someone who did not have this luxury? Some people wait until the summer before their senior year to intern and others decide their planned career is not the right one after performing an internship and change paths. These people need this chance to make sure that they are choosing the right career. If they choose the wrong internship because of a misleading job description, they will be denied this chance, and I do not think that is fair. Unfortunately, I am not really sure anything can be done about it.
Comments
Posted by: Libby Robinson
Posted on: December 4, 2006 05:53 PM
You are not the only person I have heard express these thoughts toward interning. I hope that as we progress through more courses the skills we develop will help us gain internships with more responsibility. Do you think there is a way to get a clearer picture of a position before accepting it? Perhaps during the interview process?