This article was written by The Zillennial Zine’s senior fall editorial intern Arianna Nahim. Find her on Instagram at @ariannanahim. If you would like to share an article with The Zillennial, send us an email at thezillennialzine@gmail.com.
If you ask just about any college student right now what their goal is for this upcoming summer, I am willing to bet with you that it involves acquiring an internship. “I’d be golden if I just got an internship this summer,” or “I need an internship this summer.” Both of those statements are absolutely true. Internships have transformed from a resume booster, an extra mile a student went to a basic requirement. It’s pretty well known that not having internship experience by your senior year of college does not bode well for you and will concern the advisors around a student. This is because an internship is not what it was 20, 15, and maybe even 10 years ago.
When most working adults imagine an internship, they picture a fresh face 20 something year old just eager to get in the room. They are unpaid, but don’t care, and they mostly make coffee runs and take notes. Today, being unpaid is much rarer, and coffee runs and note taking still exist, they’re just called assistants. Today, an internship means real work, real pay, and real qualifications. The main objective is not to learn, but to prove yourself.
The Death Of The Entry Level Job
The demands of an internship today ring eerily similar to the demands of an entry level job. In 2023 there was an estimated 4.1 million internships, a year later SHL reported research that stated companies intend to hire 5.8% fewer newly graduated employees. However, internships are not solely responsible for this drop off, instead they are the work around for the rise of AI. AI is namely putting entry level jobs at risk, because companies are now entrusting these systems with what they’d usually leave to the 20 something year old who is just happy to have a job. Job promotion and success is a ladder, and you cannot get to the top or even the middle of the ladder without climbing it. But if AI is assigned to these entry level jobs, that begs the question, how does anyone climb a broken ladder? This is where a transformed internship comes in. You take a student with the basic skills to complete a specific job, offer pay and prestige, and that is the new entry level position.
Another statistic that I think reflects the new idea of an internship is that 57% of organizations are more concerned with developing talent internally rather than seeking it out. The way companies can poache talent in the first place is through internships, enticing ones at that. These internships involve real work with real pay, it’s a chip on any student’s shoulder, because now they have the ultimate goal post graduation, a job. This leads to other statistics that show that 2/3 of interns receive a full time offer after their time and receive $15,000 higher salary than those who did not complete an internship.
Competition And Stakes Are At An All-Time High
The surge of advanced technology has not only produced funny Instagram filters and computers that are ready to steal your job, but an even more cutthroat competition sphere. It is easier than ever to access an internship application. A Forbes article from 2023 shows that the numbers show this increased competition saying:
ServiceNow says it saw a 50% increase in internship applications this year, while Citadel said applications were up 65% from last year, and that it accepted less than 1%, or about 300 of the 69,000 applications it received, to this summer’s program.
On LinkedIn you can see these figures manifested. In a screenshot I have from my own personal account, I found how common it is for a job posting that has only been up for a week to have over 100 applications already. I’ve analyzed the availability of job postings before with the advancement of technology and it really does directly relate to the inflated status of internships. A job posting is now available to the whole world, they are inherently more difficult to move forward in the process.
An internship is not just a job, but a status. Having an internship indicates that you are on a path, and a successful path at that. A couple of weeks ago my advisor disclosed to my advising group that Computer Science majors enter their freshman years with internship plans in place with steps to execute them, she then encouraged us as Humanities majors to replicate that.
When I’ve spoken with Computer Science and Business majors, they have described to me how an internship is a crucial and necessary step in securing a job. That same crucial step has now made its way to majors and fields of all kinds. The economy and technology of the world we know it does not allow for young adults to treat an internship as a passing point in their life. An internship now demands full commitment and attention to the chosen field. Today, an internship is not an experiment, young adults trying out a career like a new shoe. Today, an internship is going headfirst into a career path, the internship is merely the first step to dedicated oneself to a career path.
So, what do you think? Are internships worth it? Let us know in the comments below!
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