Miami Mortgage News

Former Interns Tell How They Landed a First Job

In recent years, internships have gone from nice-to-have-on-a-résumé to absolutely critical. Employers today go on to hire about 50 percent of their interns as full-time workers, according to the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. And the share is growing every year in industries like construction, consulting, accounting and scientific services.This new emphasis has upended the traditional recruiting calendar on campuses nationwide. With more companies drawing from their intern pools, recruiters have shifted their attention from hiring soon-to-graduate seniors to scoping out juniors, even as early as the fall term, for summer internships. Postings for internships now make up a significant proportion of the overall entry-level job openings in engineering, graphic design, communications, marketing and information technology, according to Burning Glass Technologies, a data analytics company that studies the job market.“There was a time when 50 employers came to recruit for interns,” said Patricia Rose, director of career services at the University of Pennsylvania. “Now we have 180. They want to wrap up talent before anyone else.”No one wants to be the first full-time employer of new college graduates anymore. Internships are “a really smart way to recruit,” said Adam Ward, head of recruiting at Pinterest, where about one-third of interns are hired in permanent jobs. “It’s all about trying before you buy.”With so many employers hiring their interns, the last internship before graduation is perhaps the most important one. “He who gets them last gets them for good,” Mr. Ward said.tory