Posted by Jatin on 25 Feb 2007 in Techtribe

Concept of internship is not new in India, but is gaining popularity now. What is an internship? Well, an internship is a paid or unpaid short-term work experience in a professional field of your choice. It enables you to try out a field you have been considering, or gain experience in a field that you know you want to pursue. This experience should provide you with a combination of training, supervision and evaluation from the organization in which you work.

We know about internships, but why should one go for an internship, instead of spending their vacations relaxing? Well, reasons for this are very straightforward. An internship is important in developing your self-awareness, in strengthening your abilities in the world of work, and gaining a competitive edge in the job market.

Internships provide you with a great opportunity to:

• Gain exposure to a particular career field.
• Learn about your own likes, dislikes, interests, and values.
• Build your skills and your résumé for full-time positions.
• Expand your network of contacts and gain a professional reference.
• Develop insight into what skills and abilities employers want.

Most of us confuse summer jobs with internships, but they do vary in certain ways. Typically, summer jobs include anything done for money, while internships must be relative to the student’s degree program. Internships also tend to be much more structured, include more training and supervision, and are designed specifically for college students. In some cases where employers are able to be highly selective, internships are completed without pay, whereas others provide a source of income as well. Both summer jobs and internships are means by which to gather work experience, although an internship might offer a student an experience that is more closely related to full-time opportunities after college. Either way, any experience is good experience.

Don’t underestimate the value of summer jobs; they can be very useful. A summer job can help students to build a set of skills, including leadership, communication, program development, time management and organizational skills that they will be able to use in jobs they hold throughout their lives. As students progress from being underclassmen to upperclassmen, however, internships become much more important. The structured, professional environment of most internships help students to evaluate if the experience is something they want to pursue in the long term. In some cases a full-time job offer can result from a successfully completed internship.

If you are convinced about the importance of internships and don’t want to wait till you graduate for professional work experience, then you must be wondering how one must selct internship of their choice. Well, for this you need to decide what you want to gain from an internship experience. The more specific you are about the goals you want to achieve, the easier it will be to evaluate your options.

Here are some ideas of what you might want to gain from an internship:

• Learn more about a chosen field.
• Apply classroom theory to real work situations.
• Become more knowledgeable about general work functions in a particular field.
• Investigate organizational culture.
• Learn career related skills.
• Polish written and oral communication skills.

Here are some thoughts on how to evaluate an internship site:

• What kind of training and supervision will you receive?
• Is there a good mentoring system at the employer?
• Will there be a good opportunity to expand your network of contacts?
• Will you be improving important skills needed for future opportunities?
• Will the employer provide you with substantive work assignments?

As you go through the interviewing process you can ask very specific questions of the employer to verify that the experience will fulfill your goals.

To ease your search in internship, you can take help of web portals like hellointern.com . It also has an active forum for discussion about internships in India and also for those who want to plan their internships abroad.

Once, you have got that coveted internship position, you must make the most of it. The following are some suggestions that will help you make your work experience more beneficial:

• Be proactive: Clerical work will be part of almost all internships. Do it willingly. However, be proactive in asking for more significant work assignments. Showing initiative can make your experience much stronger.
• Network, Network, Network. Talk to as many people as possible in the organization to gain as much information about the career field in which you are working.
• Keep all of your work samples. Develop a portfolio of examples of your work that you can show prospective employers for your next internship or full-time job.
• Journal your experiences every day. Doing this will enable you to relate what you did on the job in a more professional and succinct manner.
• Develop a log of your tasks. Create a table that shows what you did, how you did it and the results of your work. Doing this will help you remember the tasks you accomplished and the skills that you developed in your job.
• Reflect after your internship. What did you learn about yourself, the career field, and your goals from the internship experience?

So, what are you waiting for? Dont let the coming summer vacations go waste idling around. Begin building a solid base for your career from NOW!