You need an internship! 

College is supposed to be fun. Take it from this old lady, there is no other time in your life where you get to still be under the protective umbrella of your parents but you don’t have to listen to their rules.

I know this is a very blanket statement, and I know there are college students out there that are completely supporting themselves.

On the other hand, there are those that still have a curfew and their mom is still their “study buddy.”

My point is EVERYONE is excited for college. It could be because you have realized that you can make your schedule so that you never have a class before noon or because you are excited to finally choose what you get to learn, instead of being told what you have to learn or because you finally get to move to a warm climate and see sunshine every day. College is awesome, so why should you spend your time at an internship that you probably won’t even get paid for?! Well, several reasons…

• The first is you need something on your resume besides that job mowing lawns in the summer when you were 16. If you can’t fill up a whole page when you are typing your resume, that is not good. As a recruiter I can tell you that double spacing and using a bigger font in bold does not fool us. Remember, we were trying to find our first job once too! Even if you have one internship in college, you can really beef up your bullet pointed job responsibilities and even spend some time talking about the aspects that you especially liked. (we love that)
• The second reason that you need a college internship is that you will make a ton of connections that you would never make while you are holed up on campus. I would not count on your roommate’s dad being a multimillionaire and offering you your dream job so you gotta get out there and meet people. Even if you decide during your internship that this is not the industry you want to work in, you have still met and made connections with actual adults who know other actual adults who work in other industries that may be hiring.
• Another reason to be on the internship hunt is the probability that you can get at least one glowing letter of recommendation out of someone who works there. Recruiters may not even read them but the fact that you have one lets us know that someone liked working with you. We want to hire people that fit into our culture and get along with us (we spend A LOT of time together) so if we see that you got along with people that you worked with or for it makes us happy.
• You will get college credit. Don’t discount this. I ended up with 12 credits from internships that I did in college. That is an entire semester worth of credits! So maybe I had to drive around a big headed local TV reporter while I interned at our local news station but that was WAY better than sitting in class, writing papers and taking tests! Also, many companies will pay you a little as well. I pay my interns $10 an hour. They aren’t getting rich but its enough for a little weekend beer money.
• Finally, you may actually get hired! My entire company’s philosophy revolves around hiring interns with the hopes that their will be a mutual fit and they can have a job offer waiting for them upon graduation. In fact 90% of our hires come from our internship program. Imagine actually having a job all locked up before your graduation, it’s like the 1980’s!

So there you have it: 5 reasons why you should get out there and find an internship, any internship if you have to.

My goal is to help each and every college student find an internship and eventually a career that they love. Stay tuned as I “hold your hand” through the process.