When someone initially describes an unpaid internship to you, it can sound a little strange. The concept of working for free sounded pretty strange to me when I first heard it. But after a couple of years and a little bit of research, I was able to see the potential benefits of internships. If you’re like me and have trouble understanding why anyone would waste any time working a job that doesn’t pay, hopefully this article will give you a couple reasons being an intern might not be so bad.
1. Experience
Experience and money are two very different things. Even though you can’t buy a new phone with experience, job experience still has a surprising amount of value. A 2010 American community survey released from the U.S. Census Bureau stated that 62.2% of college graduates who earned a Bachelor’s degree were underemployed, which basically means that although they did all the work required to earn their degree, most ended up working jobs that didn’t even require a college degree at all. Why? Well one of the main reasons for this is lack of job experience. According to a survey done by the Chronicle of Higher Education, employers stated that one of the most important factors considered when hiring a recent graduate is internships or work experience.
2. Job placement
So, let’s go back to that survey from the U.S. Census Bureau. That same survey stated that 27 percent of college graduates found a job closely related to their major. That means after going to school and specializing in one field for at least half of your college career, you could graduate and end up never using the skills related to the field you majored in. Some people graduate and end up getting stuck in careers where they never use the skills related to their major. Internships are an easy way to prevent this, because many times the place you intern in could very well end up being the first place you work, which can help ensure that whatever it is you spent your time studying in college will go to good use when you get out.
3. The “test drive”
Remember how we talked about how people could spend 4 years studying a specific field and then never use that field? Something even worse than that is that they could end up working in the field they specialized in...and hate it. Which leads me to perhaps the most convincing argument for internships: the opportunity to test drive your future. Internships provide you with the unique chance to experience your job field for yourself, allowing you to figure out if it’s really something that you want to spend the rest of your life doing. Changing your career or even your career field after you graduate can be expensive and time-consuming, so figuring out what you want to do before you leave college could potentially save you thousands of dollars and a whole lot of time.
So there you have it, a few reasons that prove that while you may not make much money during an internship, it still might be worth your time. Hopefully this article will help you cringe a little less the next time somebody suggest taking a little time or maybe even a semester to work a job and not get paid.
