Something that is front-of-mind of many university students is what their path looks like after they graduate. For many, this involves securing their first full-time job and a key part of this, for some, is doing internships relevant to that job. In my opinion, however, a lot of people view internships in the wrong way and miss the main point of why they exist and why they are beneficial to do.
Playing the “career game”
One thing that shocked me when I started university is how career-minded my peers were from the very start of university. Their thinking was that those with job offers waiting for them post-graduation usually get them by either converting a summer internship or by doing a few internships to bolster up their CV. The company you work at as an intern holds weight too. As a CS student, eyebrows are raised if you work at Google, Apple or any big tech firm and make you appear as desirable talent for companies looking to hire recent graduates.
The popularity of this “career game” pushes first year and second year students to mass-apply to companies for internship positions, with extra emphasis placed on the companies everyone has heard of. Overtime, this drives the competition for these kind of roles, making it even harder for those wishing to follow in their footsteps.
Nothing is wrong with this mindset. In fact, it makes sense in lots of ways. However, as much as I tried to play this game from early on (motivated by peer pressure), I quickly gave up. Unlike my peers with clarity of what they wanted out of their career, I had no idea, especially early into my university degree. This initial confusion has since shaped my perspective on internships.
The main benefit of internships that everyone forgets
The biggest benefit of doing an internship is neither the company name you can put on your CV nor the salary that you can earn over the summer. Instead, these opportunities help you understand what it is like to work in a specific role in a specific company without the commitment of working there full time. With this said, they are the best way to find out what kind of company you want to work at and the career path that suits you.
For CS students and aspiring software engineers, this is important because what company you work at has a massive influence on what your software engineering role looks like.
A software engineer at a startup is mainly concerned with closely communicating with their initial clients to deliver value (in the form of software) at a fast pace and quickly iterate. They may not be as concerned with using proper software engineering practices and sustainable software design; things that are front-of-mind for engineers working in big companies with established software systems.
The company’s industry impacts the technical problems that you end up solving and can also play a role in the culture of the overall company.
Some companies have very clear steps for promotion and specific titles that reflect this, while other companies have a flat structure where one’s job title is not important. This affects an employee’s perception of “seniority”, which can further impact the responsibilities that you have and others expect you have.
Given this realisation, I optimised for variety in my internship applications instead of salary or company name. At the end of my second year, I was a Technology Support Intern in the Rates team at Citibank. For my 6 month industrial placement in my third year, I was a placement student at MindLink, a 30-man technology company offering communication solutions to high-security clients. Both of these opportunities informed my perspective of what it was like to work in companies of different sizes, with different business problems from different industries. This meant that I had a slightly clearer idea of what I wanted from a company I worked at. In turn, this helped me form an implicit “priority list” of companies when I was applying for full time roles, meaning I could judge which applications I wanted to put more effort into.
To be honest, I could have been even more varied with the opportunities that I sought out. By the time I was doing my final year research project, which I really enjoyed, pursuing a similar piece of work as PhD research was not something I ever saw myself considering. I wish I paid more attention to forward deployed engineering roles since these may have really suited my interests and personality. I could have tried quantitative development or technology consulting. And these are just the options vaguely related to my degree.
The point I am trying to drive home is that you should embrace variety in internships that they apply for and use them as an opportunity to figure out what you want out of a career. I understand that many are concerned with job security. If you get a return offer from an internship that you did not like, you may feel like you should take the offer because it relieves the stress of finding a role all over again and it provides you with something stable. I would say two things in response to this:
If you can secure the internship that you did not like, you can probably secure a full time role that you like more.
If you are solid at a job you are not fired up about (solid enough to get a return offer), imagine how great you would be at a job you were fired up about
Simply put: you should not settle in a job you search for post-university. Internships are a great way of figuring out what “not settling” looks like and should not be seen as a means to settle.