Are Internship Worth the Effort - Essay Example

Are Internship Worth The Effort? Introduction Internship is a training program beneficial for those who want to pursue their career in respectable professions of the society. Internship programs are specially designed in different training organizations. They are for the purpose of polishing the skills of university and high school students in the subjects that they choose according to the professions in which they look forward to build their careers. Via internship, students aim to acquire distinguishable levels of expertise either during or after completing their graduation qualification. Training institutes offer variable time durations for different internship programs. They also have the sole authority of either paying the internee or take internee’s services without pay. During the internship training, internees often have to bear all their expenses. Internship is actually an exchange of experience to the internee with the services provided to the training organization. Internship is a great opportunity for any students to assess his capabilities and level of indulgence in a particular profession. It creates an entirely new horizon of social network for the future professionals. Internship also effectively serves as an handsome opportunity for the internee to get recruited as a paid permanent employee of that respective organization. This analysis program also acts as a great attraction for the training organizations, as they can screen out the best employees after judging their skill levels. These new employees yet old trainees already have enough know how about the company’s work nature and ease out the organization’s burden to train them from the start. To remind, internship does not provide any surety of selection as a paid employee at the end of training tenure. Internship In North America Internships are offered by various organizations that operate in various sectors throughout the North American region. Internships offered in North America are of two types. These include those internships that are not paid and internships that are paid. A survey was conducted during the period of 2012 by the organization called National Association of Colleges and Employers and the survey included a total of 306 organizations that were operating in the North American region (NACE 1). The survey states that the minimum average salary that interns were paid on per hour basis for interns who had completed their bachelor’s level of education was $16.21, for those who had completed master’s level of education it was $21.90 and the students who had completed their education in the field of engineering were being paid the highest hourly rate of $20.36 (NACE 1). The survey even states that the time period for which an intern is hired ranged between 1 week to 12 months and they are hired in all industries including technology, automobiles, banking, Iron, Auditing and various other industries. As compared to internships in North America, Canadian interns have to be paid a minimum wage amount of $10.25 for each hour of their work and it is illegal to hire unpaid interns in Canada (Canadian Intern Association 1). Internships in Canada are even offered in almost of the industries including healthcare, accounting and others. Pros of Internship: Internship program serves as a versatile platform for interns to explore the dimensions of their own personalities in which they are influential and possess the power of excelling expertise. It also enables them to search their deep-seated professional lacking and thoroughly work to refine their capabilities. Therefore, attaining internship training plays as a role model and enables people to survive and carve way through crucial challenging professional setbacks. Internship is a great source of enhancing your leadership power. According to Williams, internship programs that are offered to students who are pursuing a career as a leader in educational institutes help these students in applying the leadership theories learned in academic courses to real life situations and this helps them in becoming better leaders (Williams 68). The most fruitful outcome of this training program is the gain of immense confidence by the intern at the end of internship period. This new boost of self-confidence can greatly help a new growing leader in any field, which is an essential perspective to face the initial challenges to set up a stable professional foundation. Interns who are truly ambitious seek full advantage of the blessing experiences, either good or bitter, and sensibly apply them to integrate new fertile ideas in their profession. Moreover, this experience conducts a brave stimulus of encountering risks of various levels. Chen conducted a study in which the researcher identified that internships in the hospitality industry make interns feel that they have selected the right industry and they continue to work in the industry. Internship program also proves to be worthwhile for the mentors as they expand the horizons of learning for them as well. Interns serve as an indirect stimulus for the mentors to enhance their thinking and creativity. Their skills of evaluation are also upgraded with different encounters during these training sessions. Huybrecht conducted a study in which mentors believed that benefit of mentoring included that ability to evaluate and provide feedback to trainees (Huybrecht 276). Schools and systems are trained via these programs. They are very helpful in letting these schools explore the reforms that they need to adopt for achieving emerging vitality and promoting their status. Cons of Internship: The mentors are responsible to make the interns aware of the setbacks and bitter experiences of any profession that they pursue in future. Some training programs set heroic images for the interns, which can turn out to be devastating in future. Such programs are deficient of revealing need for risk taking and having staunch survival attitude towards professional crisis. Some programs do not end in the right way. Instead of promoting creation of future leaders via strong training tools, these programs make the interns totally dependent on the mentor. This is a big pitfall of these training programs. Mentors must recognize the sensitivity of transmitting their knowledge in an appropriate way to the fertile inexperienced, eager interns. Mentor can also be a victim of psychological suffering in an unsuccessful internship program. If assigned reluctant to learn, carefree interns, it becomes very disappointing for an honest mentor trying to guide with all his potential (Capasso 99). This can result in stepping back of a good mentor from being a part of any other internship program. Schools make arrangements for internship programs mostly during the phase when the school is struggling either financially or in terms of image maintenance. Internship programs that turn out to be fruitless overburden the school with additional financial crisis. Conclusion: Internship programs enables an individual to evaluate the compatibly of his skills with the working nature of the profession in which he aims to pursue a career. Effective internships enable the interns to explore a completely new horizon of qualities that they bestowed with. Actually, people don’t even recognize their capability levels, their risk taking capacity, adaptation tendency of new versatile ideas, and convincing self-confidence, unless they gain experiences of multiple internship trainings. Apart from all the privileges of internship, it can even be a profitless experience at times. Seldom interns gain nothing from some training programs in spite of investing ample time and money. How a program would conclude does not only depend on the devotion of the intern, but also on how sincere the mentor is. The way a mentor delivers his knowledge to the interns and set a role model is crucial. Schools often acquire plenty of benefits in enhancing their standards via internship programs. Works Cited NACE. "2013 Internship & Co-op Survey." National Association of Colleges and Employers. National Association of Colleges and Employers, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2014. . Williams, Ellen J, Joseph Matthews, and Steven Baugh. "Developing a Mentoring Internship Model for School Leadership: Using Legitimate Peripheral Participation."Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning. 12.1 (2004): 53-70. Print. Chen, Tzu-Ling, and Ching-Cheng Shen. "Todays Intern, Tomorrows Practitioner????the Influence of Internship Programmes on Students Career Development in the Hospitality Industry." Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education. 11.1 (2012): 29-40. Print. Huybrecht, Sabine, Wim Loeckx, Yvo Quaeyhaegens, Tobel D. De, and Wilhelm Mistiaen. "Mentoring in Nursing Education: Perceived Characteristics of Mentors and the Consequences of Mentorship." Nurse Education Today. 31.3 (2011): 274-278. Print. Capasso, Ronald L, and John C. Daresh. The School Administrator Internship Handbook: Leading, Mentoring and Participating in the Internship Program. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin Press, 2001. Print. "What Is the Law?" Canadian Intern Association. Web. 18 Nov. 2014. . Read More