The Changing Face of Internships

Before the Industrial Revolution and Ford’s assembly line, apprenticeships were the precursor to the modern internship. If you wanted to be a blacksmith, then you got an apprenticeship with the local blacksmith. These apprenticeships were a young adult’s college. They learned scores of valuable lessons from their mentors- a far cry from today’s internship.

It seems as if the internship has become a gatekeeper for entry-level positions. Several companies only hire candidates who have completed an internship. What’s worse is some of these internships are nothing more than learning how to memorize coffee orders and doing grunt work. This intern work isn’t teaching you applicable skills, because it is just going to be done by the next intern once your internship is up.

How Internships are Changing

One youth program in New Orleans is working to change the face of internships by teaching young adults life and work skills applicable to jobs in Engineering, Biotech, and Digital Marketing. The program, called Youth Force, is a co-effort between the New Orleans Business Alliance and a non-profit program called EducateNow!.

Its goal is to combat the 14% national unemployment rate among 16-24 year-olds, which is nearly double the national average. It was only launched recently in 2015 as a pilot program featuring 20 high school and college students, so data on its effectiveness is not yet available. With that being said, the program’s strategy seems as if it has made success inevitable.

The Internship before the Internship

The program has established a give-and-take relationship with its partnering companies. It provides students with all of the “soft” skills they need to succeed in an internship, and in return for these prepared internship candidates, companies are asked to provide a meaningful and applicable work experience.

The soft-skills training is an extensive 60-hour course covering skills relevant to internships across any industry. It involves skills like understanding the importance of meeting deadlines, giving a firm handshake, dressing for the office, and cell-phone etiquette during a business meeting.

The back-end of the program is all about interview preparation. All students complete several mock interviews, and then the final step is placement for real interviews with the program’s partnering companies in Engineering, Biotech, Healthcare, and Digital Marketing.

The Future of Internships

Programs like the one in New Orleans have sprung up all over the country. Seattle and New York City are two of the several cities with growing youth programs with similar strategic missions.

At its essence, the vision of these programs is to transform the internship back into an apprenticeship. Millennials who have gone to and graduated college with the idea that a degree would be a ticket to a high-paying job have realized this was a pipe-dream. The older members of Generation Z are looking at how their Millennial forefathers are drowning in debt at jobs outside of their degree fields and questioning the value of college. They want to learn about their chosen fields through meaningful work experience and the guidance of a qualified mentor.

With this growing trend, it seems as if the Millennials may be the last generation to work a meaningless internship spent in Starbucks lines and in front of copy machines.

How do you feel about internships? Do you have any experiences our readers can learn from? Drop us a line in the comments.