Internships for Students Provide Hands-On Experience

Internships are becomingly increasingly popular with college students. It’s not hard to see why. Not only do they provide students with an opportunity to get hands-on experience in a particular field, they also make them more attractive job candidates (once they’re actually out there looking for a job).

Most internships (which tend to be unpaid) are structured so that a student receives supervision not only from an individual on-site at the location of the internship, but also by a faculty member at the student’s school. When close collaboration takes place between the two supervisors, a student can benefit immeasurably from the experience. While the on-site supervisor will be primarily concerned with the practical aspects of a student completing specific tasks, the faculty supervisor will be monitoring the experience to see that it relates to the student’s academic interests.

Naturally, as students undertake internships, they are in a workplace setting, where they have opportunities to meet practitioners. Through interactions with workers responsible for completing jobs by specific deadlines, under given budget constraints, students will acquire a better appreciation for what it takes to be successful while on the job. Additionally, they have a superb opportunity to demonstrate the abilities, talents, and skills they can bring to a workplace setting.

Not the least among such considerations is how well students are able to work with others. Increasingly, in the global economy, workers who are able to function cooperatively, allowing for differences in cultural values among members of a particular organization’s workforce are better-positioned to succeed professionally.

For these reasons, it’s no wonder that students are clamoring to do internships these days.