Contemporary Insights on Internship Placements
Finding an internship placement has never been easy for students at their mid term studies nor end of year program. When you are pursuing a career that requires both practice and understanding with tools as a great asset for future jobs, then internships while studying becomes a necessity. One of the reasons that schools do recommend internships for students is because they do understand that classroom work is not enough in a world that needs practical skills. Institutions therefore understand the need for students to acquire experience because it will not only speed up learning by the time they graduate but also serve as a catalyst to kick start their career. The acquired experiences help the aforementioned students within companies that find it hard to teach these skills.
Over the years, internship placements have proven to be a big deal. I have come across hundreds of stranded students worried about where they need to practice and have an internship report to submit to fulfill the requirements of their end of year program. I make this claim because of several years of experience in building Tech Communities and also trained hundreds of interns. With the same experience I can attest to the reason why some companies find it hard to accept interns.
Why Companies Are Discouraged In Accepting Interns:
Internship letters coming from Universities usually have a list of requirements and tools the University/College expects that after some few months the student would have had hands on those technologies. Now the company where the student is applying for an experience has a different view of who an intern is. As much as they may be willing to accept you in their organization or company and have you in the working environment of experience, they do not want to take much of their time teaching you skills they expected you should have learned while in school. This is the problem that many companies face and it frustrates them accepting different batches of interns and repeating the cycle of investing more time to teach them skills. To some companies and Organizations they think their work progress is getting slow as they have to teach students the basic skills. As a result of this, companies have created rules that make it difficult for the majority of students not to qualify, thus, not accepting interns.
However, students have to distinguish between Academic mentors and those who can practice while mentoring in class. This way you as a student have to do the greater job. This takes us into talking briefly about Making your Career a Passion.
If you are pursuing a career path it means so much is desired of you than from your mentor. The tuition does not equate immediate success but rather the majority of the work depends on you not the Mentor. If you can’t find passion in what you do, learning or building skills becomes a burden. What happens if you never get a job after leaving school? When you ask yourself this question then you will find a reason to build more skills for yourself and I am happy to see most Universities/Colleges try to solve unemployment by taking much interest in Entrepreneurship as a way to combat these problems faced by most graduates.
How We Are Solving This Puzzle:
As a result of this, one of TekCitadel’s Action Plan for 2021 is running an internship program. This program is part of it’s Out Reach Program to building Tech communities around the globe and creating an opportunity for students to network and share knowledge and skills with friends from different cultural backgrounds. This year we accepted 17 interns from different countries who are currently at their 4th week of learning and improving in skills. In our next batch of interns we will announce on our website the application process.
Benefits of the Program:
This program is aimed at giving you an opportunity to gain some experience on hands on projects with TekCitadel LLC. To give you an opportunity to network with other people from different backgrounds and cultures while sharing ideas related to building skills. At the end of each session, an intern is given a letter or recommendation letter for their participation. The follow-up is done through a maintained communication and also sharing available opportunities aligning with their skills. The program also gives an opportunity to learn remote work, build consistent communication skills, learn punctuality and above all, experience in Team Building.
The duration for the internship program is two months. It permits flexible working hours with interns based on different time zones and also assigning tasks to them. This is because the selected interns for this session are in different time zones but we have created flexible schedules to meet their requirements and they are punctual in submitting their assigned tasks.
To conclude, as someone looking for an internship placement, applying only to big companies at times is risky as you may have little or no follow up or practice. It is often assumed that only big companies are more reliable in learning and practice. Startups have proven to be a great start for interns because it has the opportunity to offer interns hands-on skills especially learning the culture and taking part in several events. Joining Tech communities in your respective cities is also a great way to learn and perfect one’s skills. Most Tech Communities have Hackathons. These are great opportunities to participate in quick prototype development and launch.
