1. Fit of the Job Role
I have seen so many young engineers enter the job market, and take a job offer with a new company, and 3 to 5 years later leave the company disgruntled. It usually isn’t the company’s fault; although sometimes it is caused by working for a bad leader (a topic for another time). Often the issue stems from picking a role in the company that the individual wasn’t in love with. I know that you may think that the notion of loving your job is silly, and you probably will have to power through some time in a job that you are either not ready for or isn’t your exact fit. I will firmly stand by the idea that if you find a company and a mission that you are passionate about you can much more easily become successful in your career. An internship lets you get a taste for what a certain company is like. What their mission and company culture is. An interview, or pre-hire research won’t show you these things realistically. A 3-month summer internship gives you adequate time to measure whether the company is somewhere that you would like to work. Just as importantly you can also use this experience as a litmus when asking other potential employers the right questions to gauge their likeness to the positive, and potentially not so positive parts of your experience to make a more informed decision in the future.
Some things that I personally asked companies after my internship many moons ago:
- Will I have a formal mentor to help guide me along in my technical growth?
- How are the team’s goals decided, and measured?
- How does a new employee get trained in the product and domain knowledge of the company?
2. Working With a Team
Unless you are going into business for yourself, or doing some sort of freelance work you will generally always be expected to work in a team. This team will generally have some set of common goals that transcend anyone’s individual growth goals. An internship will give you an opportunity to see first hand what a real team feels like. All of the good and bad that can come with that. In school, you may have a team project, and from most of the interviews I have ever been in there are a handful of students that are on one of these teams, and most of them are doing a horrible job. You, of course, are probably the savior of the team. All of this, of course, is a matter of perspective, and a good interviewer will know how to ask the right questions and dissect your answers to identify certain personality traits. However, in an internship, chances are high that you really need the help of your team to accomplish your goal. It puts a very different perspective on things, and gives you an enormous amount of data about the types of people you work best with. It also, hopefully, provides you with some introspective views of yourself and areas that you can work on to be a better teammate yourself. All of this is fantastic to discuss in an interview. I cannot speak for all companies in the world, but I believe if you can show candid personal reflection on what you learned in a team experience and how you intend to be a better engineer because of it, you will be a much more valuable candidate to the prospective company.
3.Networking in the Industry
Every full-time job that I have ever gotten was through some connection from my past experience. This valuable connection that you make might someday give you a shot at your next job, or at least alert you to openings from their friends if they aren’t in a position to make a move themselves. This is an often overlooked prize of an internship. You never know what kind of opportunity may await if you go into an internship and make relationships with those seasoned veterans, or even the other interns around you and show them that you are smart, take initiative, and are a great team-mate to work with. The worst-case scenario is that you make some great friends with people that you can learn from. The best case scenario is that you eventually land your dream job because they remember you and reach out on LinkedIn one day in the future.
4. Experience vs Education
A college degree and a good GPA have been sold as the key to getting a great job with a good company. I believe that in the job market today the company you are interviewing with is going to try their hardest to reduce risk in hiring someone that may or may not be cut out for the industry. They will also know that you have the experience of working for a company, which like them has some goal to produce a certain product or service at a profitable level. Academia cannot realistically provide the experience of such demands as their primary product is the student, not the business that any department may or may not take on to help subsidize the learning process.
According to datausa.io 180,626 engineering degrees were awarded in the US in 2016 (1 year), and according to the US Department of Labor the 140,000 new engineering jobs created in the US between 2016 and 2026 (10 years). This statistic alone doesn’t indicate an exact measure of job scarcity or the new engineer density in the job market as there are other factors such as those individuals who leave the engineering sector for other jobs, or those that retire, etc. However, the 10:1 ratio is still enough to make me think that an individual student needs to be a stand out to have a shot at getting a great job. An internship shows the prospective company that you are interviewing with that you have done real meaningful work in the industry, and are ready to take on a full-time career.