#JobSearch : Do You Need to Do an Internship Before You Graduate From College? Got Kids? MUSt REad!

College students who perform well in summer internships have long had an advantage with hiring managers once they graduate. Remote work and school during the pandemic made it harder for recruiters to connect with college students over the past year, so companies have become even more inclined to hire their interns for full-time positions, recruiters say, even if the internship was over Zoom.

Employers were much more likely to make offers of full-time employment to Class of 2020 interns than they were to those who interned in previous years, according to data from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Among eligible interns from the Class of 2020, 79.9% received offers, compared with 68% from the Class of 2019 and 70.4% from the Class of 2018.

Of employers who offered internships in the summer of 2020, about 72% had interns working remotely, according to NACE. Employers offered full-time positions to 80.5% of virtual interns, compared with 73.3% of on-site interns.

“Since so much recruiting is virtual right now, it just makes it harder to recruit from the general population at large,” said Joshua Kahn, assistant director of research and public policy at NACE. While a variety of factors could be contributing to the trend, he said, “it makes sense that employers would rather make more offers to their interns than they normally would.”

The details

As companies grapple with onboarding new employees remotely, pre-existing knowledge of a company, gained through an internship, can become an additional asset. Elizabeth Stephens, 22, interned at the New York language strategy consultancy Maslansky + Partners remotely last summer and this spring. She will start work as an associate project coordinator in June, after graduating from Colby College.

“Even though I lack the technical experience in project management, I still had comprehensive background in how M+P operates,” said Ms. Stephens. That knowledge of the company’s inner workings gave her a significant leg up, her soon-to-be boss told her, allowing her to skip the adjustment period some new employees require.

The medical device and healthcare company Abbott has an internship program that brings in about 1,000 students each summer, said Bryan Quick, the company’s director of global university relations. Last year the company conducted its internship program virtually, and ended up hiring more students for full-time roles than in previous years, he said.

Beth Hendler-Grunt, president of Next Great Step, a Livingston, N.J., firm that coaches college students and graduates on their careers, said she has noted the uptick in employers hiring from internship programs, particularly in industries like finance and consulting. Still, she said, employers are aware of the challenges of the past year, and may be willing to consider a graduate without an internship on their résumé if they can make a strong case for abilities they gained through other experiences.

“If they can communicate how they were able to gain skills,” she said, “they can easily explain their way into how they have the skill set for that position.”

WSJ Author:  Kathryn Dill at kathryn.dill@wsj.com