In response to something DamnCat just mentioned . . .
What Is an Internship?
An internship is a professional learning experience that offers meaningful, practical work related to a student’s field of study or career interest. An internship gives a student the opportunity for career exploration and development, and to learn new skills. It offers the employer the opportunity to bring new ideas and energy into the workplace, develop talent and potentially build a pipeline for future full-time employees. A quality internship:
- Consists of a part-time or full-time work schedule that includes no more than 25% clerical or administrative duties.
- Provides a clear job/project description for the work experience.
- Orients the student to the organization, its culture and proposed work assignment(s).
- Helps the student develop and achieve learning goals.
- Offers regular feedback to the student intern.
What is the difference between an internship, cooperative education (co-op), and research experience?
Internships are supervised, structured learning experiences in a professional setting that allow you to gain valuable work experience in a student’s chosen field of study. Internships require a minimum of 120 hours (typically, at least 10 hours per week during the fall and spring and either part-time or full-time during the summer).
Student Interns Expect:
- To gain real work experience and provide meaningful assistance to the company. They don’t want to be gophers!
- To have a mentor who provides guidance, feedback, receptiveness and models professionalism.
- To gain experience and skills in a particular field.
- To develop professional contacts.
- To gain exposure to upper management.
- To receive an orientation to the company for which they are interning. This introduces the student to the company’s mission and goals and provides them with information about company rules, regulations and procedures. It also introduces the intern to fellow employees who they can go to in the future with questions.
Benefits of Hiring an Intern:
“To gain exposure to upper management.”
Well, the interns here at IMAO are definitely exposed, though with FrankJ being a sort of absentee CEO, I’m not sure upper management even knows they’re here.
Frank: “The who now? The what now? We have them? What’s our liability? Is Walrus in shorts?”
“To gain experience and skills in a particular field.”
I must have been an intern..started at 8 years in red and black currants, moved on to years of strawberries and apples and graduated to chickens and pigs. I thought I turned out alright, but my wife says I’m not right almost daily..
I thought it just was a better way of saying unpaid labor.
All I saw was “receptiveness” and “models.”