Why an Internship is Beneficial to your Career

Getting a job is a difficult process, especially for recent graduates. Even if you come out with amazing grades, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd without proper experience. The best way to gain that experience is through an internship. An internship is generally thought of as a work experience placement, and is offered by companies in most fields.

Here’s some of the main benefits to taking part in an internship, and how it can help you build a career.

It can help you gain skills

An internship is primarily a learning experience. You can both watch work in action and hopefully take part in it yourself, allowing you to gain new skills and experience that you can only get on the job.

You can do it around work and education

One of the great things about internships is that they don’t involve permanent, long-term commitment, an advantage if you’re in full-time education. Different internships will run for differing amounts of time, from a few weeks up to a year, and the most popular being during summer. This flexibility can help you apply for work experience which best suits you.

It looks good on a CV

This is especially relevant for recent graduates, as you may not otherwise have had the opportunity to gain experience outside of full-time education. While applying for a job, chances are a lot of applicants will have similar educational backgrounds to you. Doing an internship should help give you that little bit of a boost to make you stand out from the others.

Expands your network

One of the great things about an internship is that it allows you to work closely with people in the field you want to go into. This gives you not only the opportunity to ask them questions about their careers that you might not find on the internet, but it also allows you the chance to build connections that could be useful when getting a job later.

Allows you to explore your field

While you may know what general career path you want to go down, you may not know specifically what you want to do. Often at an internship you will be asked to oversee, and take part in, a number of different areas of work, which should help you narrow down more precisely what field you want to go into.

You can potentially receive payment

There’s a lot of debate around the ethics of unpaid internships and whether they potentially exclude all but the most financially well off. This push back means that more and more companies are now paying their interns, or at least giving them financial support, which could be an extra bonus for you.

You may get a job at the end of it

This isn’t a guarantee, but if you make a good enough impression on your employers during your internship it could result in them keeping you on afterwards. Even if it doesn’t, an internship gives you enough skills and experience to make getting a job much easier than before.