Summer internships

It's that time of year — internship season. Looking over possible companies, bidding for interviews, preparing for the interviews, hoping for callbacks, preparing for a callback, the torture of that process, waiting for an offer, and — you can only hope — the strain of choosing among several good offers. This essay is, generally, not applicable to students who have to — get to! — go through this last step. I'm addressing this essay primarily to those students who are worried about their internship.

Let me get this out of the way right now: If you work this summer in any capacity, you have the opportunity to impress a future employer. Suppose that you want to work for some random industry (let's call it "Investment Banking") but you only get an internship in another industry (let's call it "not Investment Banking"). Your life is not over. Your career path is not set. You have not been proven a loser. You do not have to change your life and career goals. This is a wonderful opportunity; it is not punishment.

Let's look at the positives that might come from getting an internship — any internship. You will gain lots of transferrable skills. These are actually the skills that future employers are most interested in. You will gain experience working with a variety of people, not just other Ross Business School students. They might have, heaven forbid, grey hair, but they might actually treat you like a real human being after working with you for a while.

You will also gain experience getting things done in an organization. This is different than getting things done at school. You will have incomplete information and a less clear path to the information you do need. You will learn when to ask for help, when to ask for information, and when to just buckle down and get it done.

You will learn about organizational life. This is very different from academic life. You will learn to work with many bosses and many more co-workers, all with very different experiences and expectations than what you've come in contact with at school. You will learn to socialize, enough so that you have a network of friends but not so much that it gets in the way of getting your work accomplished. You won't have homework, but you might be expected to work until late at night. But other nights you will not have any work to do. No homework at all. You will just be able to explore a city, read a book that you actually want to read, go to a movie, rent a DVD — whatever! It's a very different feeling than always having homework hovering over your head.

You will learn about how a big company (or a small company) works. Either one would be useful. And they are quite different than each other, and quite different than how a university works.

You also might learn what you do not like to do — even if you actually did think you would like it going into the internship. This is a very valuable lesson. This will help you eliminate a bunch of companies that you might otherwise want to interview with. And do not forget that what you do not like now is not necessarily what you will not like in the future. Surprisingly enough, when you are 30 you will be different than you are now. (At least I hope so.)

You will make contacts that you will be able to use in the future. These contacts might be for future job recommendations. This person might be someone whom you hope will hire you at some point. And do not forget that these people can change jobs, too. Just because you wouldn't want to work in this particular company in the future, this does not mean that you would not have the opportunity to work for this person at another company. Every day that you are at your internship is an interview for some future position. You'll never know when you're meeting a person for the first time that might end up hiring you, or having the possibility of hiring you, in the future.

Finally, it is actually often easier to convert a "non-big-company" experience in which you get real responsibility into great talking points for companies in the fall (during your interviews for full-time jobs) than it is to convert the experiences you might get as an intern at a large company. Remember that it's not the company that counts, and it's not the position that counts, it's what you do in that position at that company — no matter what the position or company. (Thank to Al Cotrone for bringing this last point to my attention.)

So, take that internship. Keep a positive attitude. Work hard. Set goals. Get things done. Make yourself valuable. And have a good time.