Internships

Internships: Getting Your Foot in the Door

The FBI wants you, and so do others – it could lead to a real job!

Many American presidents were once interns (Bill Clinton was once an intern in Senator J. William Fulbright's office, and Obama interned with the Senate Finance Committee. Most famous TV-anchors were interned at radio-stations. Future basketball stars, politicians, spiritual leader have an even wider variety of internships to choose from. Good jobs with good wages may be sparse in today's economy but internships aren't. You can do time with the FBI, run copy for CNN, or pound the gym floor for Nike.

And you'll gain more than experience. In fact, if a company has two candidates that are equally qualified, except that one has a six-month internship experience, who would it hire?

Boeing hires 50 to 70 percent of its interns as full-time employees. Hewlett-Packard's manager of college recruiting says that her company hires about half of its interns. And Marvell Comics estimates that 20 to 25 percent of its staff were once interns. A recent survey by North-Western University found that about 30 percent of those hired by a variety of corporations had been interns – up from 20 percent in 2000. You can't get hired at CNN Sports without having been an intern there.

Internships can also have down sides. About half of them pay little if anything, though some offer academic credit. And interns often are exploited by employers who benefit from their cheap labor, willingness to endure rotten working conditions, and tolerance for boring assignments. Of course, any job has its share of mundane tasks, but prospective interns should take care when selecting an internship to get a commitment that the majority of their time won't be spent in such a manner.

Interns cheerfully accept busywork in the beginning since many employers use it as a means of assessment. Once you've proved you're competent and diligent, you should then diplomatically request more substantive, challenging work. If the internship doesn't offer more rigorous work,the intern should bring the problem to the attention of his or her supervisor. If that fails, try speaking to the internship coordinator.

Tom Hanks was a Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival intern. Photo by Elena.

Some former interns and where they interned:

Dave Barry, well-known syndicated columnist – Congressional Quarterly.

Hillary Rodham Clinto – Washington Research Project.

Sandy Grushow – Fox Entertainment.

Tom Hanks – Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival.

John F. Kennedy Jr. - The Center for Democratic Policy, a Washington, D.C. Think-tank.

Henry Muller, former editorial director of Time, and former managing editor of Time magazine – Life Magazine.

George Stephanopouls – Former Ohio Rep. Mary R. Oakar.