If your story is anything like mine, then it goes a little like this: You went into the school year in September bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, made your appointment with the Career Development Office, got your resume checked out by the professionals, sat in on several cover letter workshops, and updated your LinkedIn profile with all the bells and whistles like “Microsoft Office” and “Organizational Skills.” With every VCLink email you received, every inkling of a job opportunity you found on your LinkedIn feeds, and each research application that you came across, you dropped whatever you were doing, whether that was studying for your big test that week or finishing that 12-page research assignment due the next day to send in your resume, a cover letter, and oftentimes your transcript, letters of recommendation and other application materials. You became a master of bragging about your skills and experience, so much so that you are now sick of talking about yourself. You practiced answering those tricky interview questions like “What’s your biggest weakness,” and thought you nailed them when the time came. And yet, here you are, sitting on your couch at home watching "America's Got Talent" and eating chocolate ice cream (Okay, that might not be exactly what you’re doing, but you get the point).
Everyone’s always talking about how society’s expectations are increasing by the minute, and how there is an ever-changing definition of what it means to be “qualified.” Within the span of a generation, the desired degree for many entry-level positions has changed from a Bachelor’s to a Master’s, and going to graduate school seems to be recognized as the new norm. What no one is talking about, however, is how this shift is impacting college students’ chances of landing a summer internship.
From my perspective, it seems as though most full-time, entry-level positions at companies are being filled either by candidates with their graduate degree or by applicants who already have two, three, even four years of experience in that field or industry. This means that recent graduates with their Bachelor’s degrees are thus working their first 6-12 months out of college in an internship position, ones that most students hope to fill their summers between college with. Of course, there are always unpaid internships, but unless these opportunities are close to home and allow one to work another part time job for income, they are not going to be financially feasible for most students (at least they definitely are not for me).
This leaves current undergrads with one option, the tabooed, unspeakable, worst-case scenario: working a summer job that won’t necessarily be the shiny gold star on your resume. Whether it’s waitressing, lifeguarding, camp counseling or working retail, unless your summer job provides you with a “marketable and professional skill” or associates you with a well-known company, you might as well consider your summer to be a waste of time—at least, that’s what our schools, our career counselors, and society at large seems to be telling us.
I do not buy into this belief. Granted, having a great internship to put on your resume as you graduate and enter the real world and the competitive job market certainly has its benefits; I am not trying to argue this fact. What I do want to challenge is the reverse argument that if one does not have this type of experience then they will not be successful post-graduation.
First off, whether or not you have some job or experience listed on your resume does not necessarily reflect your skill set, your work ethic or your circumstances. Let’s say you have an internship with a popular and successful company. While the connections you make in working with this company can be incredibly useful when looking for a real job, if you simply sit at a desk answering phone calls and retrieving coffee, and you have nothing to say about your experience and how it was valuable to you, then this position may not necessarily get you as far as you might hope. On the flip side, imagine you are working at a small restaurant as a hostess, where you must learn how to communicate well with customers and other staff, work in an organized manner, and delegate tasks to other employees. While a future employer may not recognize the name of the restaurant, and your experience as a hostess does not necessarily correlate to the position you are applying for, if you are able to talk about your experiences in a way that highlights the skills you were able to obtain and articulate why these skills are useful and important, this can be just as valuable as working for a reputable company or having an internship in the exact industry in which you are looking to work. It is all about making the most out of the opportunities you are given and framing your experiences in the most marketable, but also the most personal and authentic way possible.
If this argument doesn’t have you convinced, remember this: our generation is faced with so many unique challenges that no other generation has had to deal with, from the saturation of social media to the incredibly high expectations that are set for young people in terms of educational and professional experience. Whoever says millennials are lazy and difficult to work with has clearly never experienced what it is like to grow up in this generation alongside the development of technology, the constant changes in educational pedagogy, and the intensification of an increasingly specialized job market. Paid internships are incredibly difficult to come by as an undergrad; and don’t even get me started on unpaid internships. The idea of working for free with the economy in the state it is in and college debt as crippling as it can be is challenging and, more often than not, unrealistic.
It is disappointing that our schools and career development resources seem to set the precedent that these internships are essential to our success after graduation, because in all honesty, they are incredibly difficult to come by. Sure, Vassar has its Internship Grant Fund, which students can apply to for funding if they have a low-paid or unpaid internship, but more often than not, these grants barely pay for one’s commute and food.
By the end of the year, after receiving rejection after rejection from companies claiming they chose a candidate who already had their degree or already had two years of experience in the industry, I grew frustrated by the emails I was receiving from the Career Development Office, whether they were to advertise new job listings or to promote internship-search workshops. How about some workshops for writing resumes that showcase skills obtained outside of the office? Or perhaps some information sessions about how to balance making an income with gaining valuable and marketable experience? While I am grateful for many of the resources Vassar has on its campus, I think many of these resources often lack a real-world perspective. Vassar is a great school with a great academic reputation, and most of its students go on to be successful after graduation; however, Vassar students do not magically earn their success. They have to work really hard for it, whether they sacrifice income for an entire summer, double up on jobs or over-pack their schedules during the school year with classes and extracurriculars. These are the experiences that should be showcased on resumes, not the names of companies headquartered in New York City or whether or not someone knows how to use Photoshop; because at the end of the day, employers are hiring real people that they need to interact with and collaborate with, not robots with infinite amounts of skills and knowledge and no interpersonal skills or genuine work ethic.
We need to capitalize on the experiences we have already had, and take full advantage of these experiences, learning as much as we can and thinking about how we can apply this knowledge in the future. I am going to work the heck out of my summer camp job. I will be innovative and creative when I come up with activities for the kids, and will use my knowledge gained through being certified in CPR and Lifeguarding to ensure that my kids are safe and healthy. And hopefully when I speak to employers this time next year, they will be able to hear in my voice the passion and energy I put into my job this summer, and will be able to foresee how this might translate into whatever position I am applying for. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic—I tend to be optimistic to a fault. But I know I'm a hard worker, and I know what I want, and with the way things are right now, it feels as though I have no other choice than to hold onto this optimism. I hope you can do the same.
