11 Important Reasons Why You Should Consider Doing a Summer Internship as a Student

What’s all the hype for these summer internships about?

If you’re a serious high school or university student who’s been thinking about all the different career paths you could potentially want to go down, and you’re surrounded by goal-oriented people, you’ve likely heard people buzzing about summer internships at Google and Goldman Sachs.

You’ve likely heard about placements or work experience opportunities at top companies that seemingly everyone wants to work at, and thought to yourself, is this something I should be thinking about too?

The truth is, in today’s highly competitive corporate and business world, internships and work experience can provide you with an unparalleled advantage over other candidates who want the same job as you.

If you’re serious about becoming successful after graduating, which you probably ae if you’re reading this and following Grad Excel; keep reading and I’ll give you 11 key reasons why you should consider a summer internship!

Here we go, in no particular order.

You Get to Apply What You’ve Learnt from Class In the Real World

A summer internship is basically like a taste test for you to see what it’s like work at a certain company.

Equally, it’s a taste test for a prospective employer to see what it’s like to have you work for their firm.

During a summer internship, you’ll get the chance to put your academic knowledge and learnings to the test.

You’ll apply the specific business concepts you’ve learned in the classroom to real-world situations, and gain some practical work experience by effectively doing some of the tasks you might find yourself doing at your future job.

Through this hands-on experience, you’ll be able to gain a deeper understanding of how these concepts actually work and what they look like in the real world, instead of through a textbook.

For example, let’s use the idea that you major in finance and accounting, and study portfolio management in your coursework.

You’ll get the invaluable chance to apply what you’ve learned to managing real clients’ investment portfolios during a summer internship with a financial advisory/ financial services firm such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley or Macquarie.

As a result of this hands-on experience, you’ll be able to gain a deeper understanding of how all that classroom knowledge translates into the real-life management of assets and wealth.

Unmatched Skill Development Opportunities

As a summer intern, you will have the opportunity to enhance your problem-solving, critical thinking, analytical, and communication skills in the real world.

Since you’ll get to apply what you’ve learned in class into the real world, these skills can be further enhanced, and you’ll learn just as much as you did about the job across your entire degree, if not more during your internship.

These capabilities will serve you well in any future business career from commercial banking, to data analysis, to entrepreneurship, and make you a much more versatile professional in the workplace.

Internships Expose You to the Industry and Provide Real World Experience

By undertaking a summer internship position, you gain a deep understanding of a specific industry’s dynamics, trends, and challenges.

As you will already have developed a a good understanding of the industry you’re going into from the internships you’ve done, you’ll look a lot more credible and experienced to future employers that you might want to apply for jobs with after you graduate.

Internships Allow You to Build Up Your Resume

The summer internships on your resume serve as a direct demonstration of your commitment to your field and your readiness for the workforce, and are something that your prospective employers are going to be keeping an eye out for.

Having internships under your belt shows the firms you’re applying to that you’ve applied your knowledge and gained practical experience in the real world, are ready for the job; making you more attractive to potential employers.

You Get the Chance to Explore Different Career Options as an Intern

Another huge advantage of having internship experience is that you get the chance to explore different career paths in the business world.

During your internship, you’re going to see and experience new things, outside of the career paths you originally had in mind.

For instance, let’s say you start your internship in a supply chain management role at a large, top firm.

As you spent your internship there, you discovered that roles and positions in product procurement aligned more with your interests and strengths, and realized that that was what you wanted to do instead of supply chain management.

A year or so down the line, maybe you could go back to the same company as a graduate, working in procurement!

Internships Provide Networking Opportunities

The internships you do will provide you with unique opportunities to network with professionals, fellow interns, mentors, and supervisors.

You’ll get the chance to meet and get to know lots of working professionals in your industry and at the firm you intern at, all of whom can be valuable contacts to have in the future.

These relationships could even potentially lead to future mentorships, job offers, and industry insights not available through traditional education or an easy Google search.

Internships Can Help You Build Confidence

Your self confidence comes from you having been able to prove to yourself that you are capable of doing difficult things.

So, if you’re successful in your summer internship and achieve all your goals (such as learn the basics of the job, get some LinkedIn contacts, maybe have a few successful coffee chats, etc.), you’ll come out of the internship feeling much more accomplished and confident in your own abilities.

Get a Taste of the Company Culture

Internships allow you to experience firsthand the cultures, work environments, and values of the companies you work at.

Having a diverse range of internships under your belt can help you determine which companies you want to ultimately work for, depending on their culture and what it feels like to work there.

For example, interning at both a traditional large corporation and a startup exposes you to different company cultures.

For you aspiring investment bankers out there, think Goldman Sachs, compared to a boutique firm like Jefferies or Jarden.

You might end up recognizing that the large corporate environment’s structured hierarchy doesn’t align with your personal preference for a more collaborative and entrepreneurial startup culture, and decide to pursue a graduate role at a smaller, more boutique firm instead.

Internships Improve Your Marketability to Employers

Internships prove that you have practical skills, commitment, and readiness to contribute in a professional setting or environment.

This will easily make you stand out and more marketable in a competitive job market, as your CV is going to be heavily beefed up and look a lot more promising than that of a candidate without any relevant work experience.

Employers will keep an eye out for this stuff, and know who the strongest candidates and workers are, right from day one.

Many Internships Offer Competitive Compensation

As the marketplace for job-seeking graduates becomes more and more competitive, you’ll find that a lot of the top internships at prestigious companies offer very attractive compensation packages.

Many formal internships at top firms like Kearney, McKinsey & Company, Goldman Sachs, Jarden, Citadel, Ashurst, Kirkland & Ellis, Google and Canva (just to name a few) will offer interns the same level of base salary compensation that full time employees in those positions would get.

Obviously, your internship won’t be a year long, so you won’t get paid the entire salary or anywhere close to it, but you’ll be paid just as much as you would if you were a full time employee who worked for that timespan of the internship, which is usually between 3 and 4 months long.

How Much Compensation Are We Talking?

Here’s something to think about: all of those companies I named above, and many, many other firms out there, all offer starting graduate base salaries over $100,000 USD if you’re in a big job market like the USA or Canada.

Many of these firms go close to $200,000 as a starting base salary, and some will get close to $300,000.

Just do the math; what’s a quarter of $150,000?

That’s not even including end of year bonuses, but interns won’t get that.

Yes, there’s certainly big money to be made out there for you high performing students reading this.

This financial support and mouth watering compensation can be a great addition to your educational journey, and can be a big help in supporting you through your student living expenses and loans.

You Might Receive a Full-Time Return Offer From Your Internship

Many formal internships that take place during a student’s penultimate or final year of study at university also comes with the prospect of receiving a full-time return offer, meaning there’s a chance that if the people you work with and those who oversee you like you, they might ask you to come back after you graduate as a full time employee.

That’s why it’s not only important to get the right internship at a company you’d genuinely want to work at, but also perform well on it to impress the people you might end up working with in the future!

Closing Thoughts

All in all, summer internships provide you with invaluable experiences and a great chance to be able to apply what you’ve learnt in the classroom, into the real world.

Whether you’re planning to go into the business world, or tech, or even engineering, internships are a great way to build your credibility and set yourself up for success later in life, starting right from the day first you step into the office as an intern.

Hopefully these 11 reasons have been able to convince you to consider working towards summer internship opportunities, but there are countless other reasons I could’ve added to this article as well!

If you’re in the position to undertake one, I, and many other career enthusiasts out there, would highly recommend you consider applying for one.

If you’d like to read more about becoming the highest performing student you can be, and excelling beyond simply achieving good grades in school, check out the rest of the Medium publication, Grad Excel!

Other than that, all the best for your studies, and I hope you’re able to land the dream internship offers you want!