We already know an internship is an official program that is offered by an employer to potential employees.
It is a modern concept of decades old apprenticeship program, where a skilled laborer, often a craftsman, would take on and teach a young person their trade. In exchange for being taught a trade, the apprentice would agree to work for the craftsman for a specified duration, may be for a couple of months or more.
However, interns of these days are free to work either part time or full time at the company for a specified period of time, typically, for 1.5 or 3 months. The culture of internships is very popular in undergraduate or graduate students who need to gain valuable work or research experience for a better career ahead. Internships are available for a variety of digital marketing degrees, healthcare programs, paralegal certificates, and many other career choices.
By the time, you might have probably got an idea of what we are going to talk about. But, before we proceed let’s understand the difference between an apprenticeship and an internship. In internships, an intern is not bound to work for the employer after the internship is over, though many do. Internship also offer students a chance to “try out” a job or industry, to check if it is the right career choice for them. While, apprentices already know which field they want to go into, and work with a master in that field to learn it first-hand.
Although we know, an internship is extremely important as it allows students to present their newly learned skills and opportunities that they would not receive otherwise. They also gain technical knowledge within the industry of their choice as well as etiquettes required to interact with professionals in a workplace setting, develop essential soft skills like time management, organization, adaptability, problem-solving, teamwork and more.
This article will talk about few concrete reasons to opt for internship, especially for your professional growth.
An Internship Provides Real Life Experience and Exposure
An internship can be remarkably valuable towards your career. It not only enables you to gain first-hand exposure of working in the real world but also allows to harness the skill, knowledge, and theoretical practice they learnt in university. Through internship, students can acquire endless amounts of education in their life, however, that knowledge may not always translate to the working life. Other great thing about internship is that it teaches young professionals about the specific industries and companies they are interested in. Internship exposes interns to new people in a more controlled and stable environment and understand the know-how of the industry. Additionally, the given training, assignments, and duties without the added pressure provide a nice learning curve for students with little experience of the professional world.
An Internship Helps Gain Experience and Increase Marketability
An internship gives intern an experience in the career field they want to pursue. Not only does this give individuals an edge over other candidates when applying for jobs, it also prepares them for what to expect in their field and increases confidence in their work, in the real-time.
An Internship Allow Interns to Learn More About Yourself
To know yourself is to know your goals and how to best achieve them and internship is great at not only encouraging personal development, but also provides a greater understanding of one’s self. Internships provide a higher level of clarity which they cannot get otherwise. For instance, take a mass communication student who decides to do an internship related to his field of study. That internship will give them a chance to explore what a career in mass communication would be like. Sometimes, reality does not meet expectations or may have more hurdles than pre-assumed. This allows interns to decide whether they wish to continue with their current career path or look for other alternatives.
An Internship Helps in Networking
An Internship not only benefits you in the working environment, also helps build your professional network. In actuality, there is a 1 in 16 chance of securing a job by connecting with people, so networking is of utmost importance. It provides a great environment to meet professionals in the career field you want to pursue, as well as other interns who have similar interests.
An Internship Makes You Learn the Operational Functions of Workplace
You may be aware of Depending on your major, you may read about how organizations thrive and function in textbooks, hear from guest speakers who talk about organizational structures, or dive into case studies about workplace culture, but nothing compares to living the actual experience. Internships help students learn all about workplace culture, employee relations, and leadership structure, which should help them onboard in their first professional job with more ease than if they haven’t had professional experience.
