Sharing the Positive Impact of an Internship

It’s often said that you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to gain that experience; that’s quite the challenge! However, there is a great solution… an internship. In today’s job market, employers are doing everything they can to streamline the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding processes, and interns provide a powerful recruitment opportunity. From the employer’s perspective, interns can transition easily from being students to full-time employees. From the student’s perspective, internships can offer valuable real-world experience that they cannot learn in classrooms or from textbooks: the sort of experience they need to get a job after graduation.

Internships typically occur during the summer after the sophomore or junior years of college, soon after the students have learned and mastered new concepts in the classroom. As they say, “timing is everything,” and an internship gives the student the chance to quickly apply new information before that knowledge begins to fade.

One of B&L’s very own interns from the summer of 2022 said that the best part of his internship was that after learning certain concepts in college, he “…had great exposure to the day-to-day realities and activities of engineers in (his) practice area,” and, “now has a much better understanding of transportation engineering.”

Any student can benefit in some way from completing an internship. These benefits, however, depend on what the student hopes to achieve and whether their goals are strictly professional, personal, or somewhere in between. One of these benefits is applying the knowledge learned in the classroom within a professional setting. Another benefit is the professional and personal connections that can be made. Internships can introduce interns to professionals at all levels in a company and from numerous different departments and practice areas. The relationships that develop during an internship can be vital when seeking employment in the future. Personal relationships developed during an internship, especially those with other interns, can make navigating the experience much easier than it would have been alone.

One of the greatest benefits of an internship, though not guaranteed, is the high likelihood of a direct job offer after the internship is complete.  The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) revealed that nearly eight in ten employers extend job offers to their interns. The acceptance rate is even higher: an impressive 83%. While internships themselves are typically short-lived, the full-time jobs they may lead to can provide a stable income and strong career trajectories.

Unsure of where to start when looking for an internship? Interested students should check out their college’s upcoming career fairs or contact the college’s career center to learn more about opportunities available. Companies typically start looking for interns about a year in advance!

Barton & Loguidice will be heading to a campus near you this fall! Please visit our internships page to find out which campuses we will be visiting and to learn more about our internship program.

One of our current interns says it best,

“I would say if you wanted to be a part of a team that will help you learn and grow for an entire summer, then B&L is the place to be!”