Yeah, its still Wednesday when I wrote this sentence and the title. SO IT STILL COUNTS.
Wanted to hit up a topic that’s a little off the leadership related topics tonight. I met up with a colleague whom I had the pleasure of mentoring during his internship at _Company We Both Worked At Once Upon A Time™_ and it had me thinking about this topic in general.
TLDR
Get an internship before you graduate. Encourage others to do so. Be picky about the companies you choose. The experiences and resume building will be a huge boon to your career. Share this with college students you know!
My Mistake
I did not apply, participate in, or even think about having anything to do with an internship while I was in college. I had a mess of odd under the table jobs and then a stint of retail work. I was mildly successful with the retail side of things and was looking at becoming a Mr. Manager type person after graduating. That suddenly started looking like it wasn’t going to work out. I was going to be stuck.
It was one month past graduation when I realized my predicament. I spent much of the next 8-9 months in a stupor bouncing back and forth between doubling down on retail or trying to figure out how to keep my degree from going to waste.
By pure luck (aka NETWORKING IS IMPORTANT even if you do it passively and unintentionally), a peer from college was hunting for a referral bonus at the company he had interned at and subsequently hired on full time. He told me about their need for folks to to do ABAP programming. They’d train new hires in the system even. This was my first time hearing about SAP.
I did an HR and technical interview that were a bit brutal. I wasn’t terribly book smart on CS topics despite having just graduated. But, this company needed bodies. Two to be exact (more on that second person later). And the fame and glory of working on SAP just wasn’t making folks jump at the opportunity. So, enter stage right, Jeff of All Trades – The ABAP Developer In Training. Jeff, had just narrowly avoided being graduated for more than a year without a job in his field. What a lucky guy.
Luck is NOT the Answer
So, by a lucky streak, an old acquaintance referred me for a job that kicked off my career. As I mentioned above, said acquaintance had interned at this company prior. So, in a sense I got the benefit of internship without ever being an intern. What luck!
The other guy that got hired along side me would also later refer me to another job a few years later. That jump would be a huge step forward in my career. Even more luck?
I will say, it’s not all entirely luck. By accident I had built a small network of folks. The first one via college and reconnect thanks to the draw of referral bonuses. The other… we’ll probably also referral bonuses. But, I was someone they thought of when a need was brought up.
The rest of this is one of those “do as I say not as I do” kinds of things. Do build a network like I did. But also be more proactive. If not for luck and network I could have ended up still working retail today. While there is nothing wrong with that, it just wasn’t for me long term.
Make your own luck
For people looking to jump start their post-college career, I recommend pursuing as many internships as you can while you are still in college (across multiple companies if you can). Just don’t do more than you can physical and mentally take though. If you burn out before you graduate then you’ll have bigger problems than not having experience.
What’s in it for you?
For starters, experience in your area of expertise (I’m a software engineer by trade, so the rest of this will orient around that). Until you’ve stepped off into code that runs production processes or is sold to customers, most code you’ve seen is just console output programs meant to teach concepts of development. Actual software development can get much more dicey than the stuff from the book.
You’ll also get into things classes won’t have time to teach you. At the college I studied at,there is a databases class. This class has to survey many kinds of databases. Drop into an internship and you might get a healthy dose of hands on relational database experience. Funny enough, aside from “go be an intern somewhere” my other goto college student advice is: pay close attention to database class and learn more on your own.
You’ll learn more things from the comments on your first PR than you will from a text book. You’ll put your ego to the test. And until you get some years working in other places, you’ll say “well, at XYZ Co. they do THIS”.
Experience is important. But so is networking and getting to practice interpersonal skills. The folks you meet during your internship will likely keep tabs on your career for years(I still check in on all the folks I formerly mentored). When those folks move to other places or have opportunities that you are fit for, they may come calling.
And last(for this post) but hardly least, you’ll have a better resume with actual real world experiences on it. Recruiters and hiring managers will favor you over someone that didn’t bother interning (unless your goal is working on systems that nobody wants to work on).
Even interviews will be easier. “Tell me about a time…” interview questions will be a breeze as you’ll have actual work experience to call on instead of having to describe how you trained your dog to sit or whatever on the spot answer you come up with.
Technical interviews will get easier too. You might even be able to answer a question about polymorphism without having to talk about shapes! For example, I talk about steel coils when asked now.
I can’t stress how important interview experience gets to be. Apply to many internships. Do as many interviews as you can. It only gets easier and you only get more confident.
When is it too late?
This advice expires. But, it might last longer than you think.
I’ve seen enough folks manage to get an internship the summer after they graduate to at least give some hope for those that wait until nearly too late. Sometimes, it comes with a very blunt “we can’t guarantee a job after the internship is up” but sometimes it can roll seamlessly into full-time employment with the same company.
In the end, this is only a risk for the company hiring. You’ll get to walk away with experience or a job. The company risks not being able to get any return out of you like they might with an intern that has some time yet before graduation.
Closing Remarks
All said and done, applying for, interviewing for, and hopefully participating in an internship is one of my top pieces of advice for college students (right up there with learn databases!).
Jeff of All Trades 