Entry by Pat Patterson
Although the National Bureau of Economic Research recently announced that the recession ended, this does not mean it will be easier to land a full-time job. Employers will always be looking to hire those competitive candidates who have previous work experience. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal’s survey of college recruiters, an internship may be one of the best ways to land a full-time job offer.
I’ve recently attended a few career fairs where freshmen and sophomores have approached me to learn more about Indiana INTERNnet and ended up surprised to learn that internship opportunities exist for underclassmen.
As many students may not realize, employers are starting to identify a potential future employee as early as a student’s freshman year:
A quarter of the nearly 480 respondents to The Wall Street Journal’s survey of college recruiters said more than 50% of their new-graduate hires had been interns at their companies; 14% said more than 75% were. Similarly, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reported in its 2010 Internship & Co-op Survey that nearly 57% of students from the class of 2009 were converted from interns to full-time hires, up from 50% the previous year.
The trend toward intern-pool hiring has come on very strong in the past three to five years, according to Monica Wilson, acting co-director of career services at Dartmouth College. “Internship recruiting will largely replace entry-level recruiting in the next few years,” she says.
Firms are targeting and tracking students as early as freshman year, and undergraduates are exposed to corporate presentations and meet-and-greets within weeks of arriving on campus. Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example, holds information sessions almost as soon as classes start and makes internship offers to rising juniors and seniors as early as the last week of September.
Carlos Moore, a graphic-design student, was commissioned by the University of Arizona to film and photograph Macy’s Inc. Chief Executive Terry J. Lundgren during campus visits in 2009. Mr. Lundgren’s assistant, at his chief’s urging, later asked Mr. Moore to create a highlight DVD of the visits. That work led to a marketing internship with Macy’s in New York last summer and a job offer after graduation in May. Mr. Moore now works as a Macy’s art director, creating layouts for Macy’s publications.
“He gave me a lot of opportunities,” says Mr. Moore, adding that he felt a bit star-struck when Mr. Lundgren introduced himself and knew his name.
“Early identification is key to our strategy of …developing relationships and assessing candidates,” said Holly Paul, a U.S. recruiting leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm hired 1,454 rising juniors and seniors for summer 2010 internships and offered 90% of eligible interns a full-time position before they returned to campus.
Check out the full article from the Wall Street Journal.
