What Does A Virtual Internship Look Like

My experience of virtual internship on Inside Sherpa.

The pandemic has made us meet each other becomes difficult, and even going outside is not as enjoyable as before. It really impacts on many aspects, including on how we are working.

For me, as a student, we should have an internship at a company in this summer, but it’s not possible. Lots of companies have postponed it due to the pandemic. But some of them makes an innovation which is a virtual internship.

While I’m searching for an internship, I’ve found a virtual internship platform called Inside Sherpa. It is a platform that offers opportunities for taking an internship from multi-national companies, including General Electric, Deloitte, Accenture, and many more. It costs free and open to many people around the world.

I have attended several interns, but mostly about data analytics. It’s not just that field that has an internship, but there are many fields also, including finance, engineering, marketing, and many more.

In this article, I will give you some of my thoughts about the virtual internship on Inside Sherpa, and what makes it different from the internship that exist.

Advantages

There are things that I like about this, here are the points that I will give you about it,

There are no deadlines

The advantage while we are doing a virtual internship, we can work on our own pace. There are no deadlines so we can work without stressing on it. Therefore, while we are doing an internship, we also can learn many things thanks to less stress on thinking any deadlines that are coming.

It increases our opportunity to be hired

The virtual internship becomes a place for companies to find their new talent. Many companies held it on Inside Sherpa, including General Electric, KPMG, ANZ, Deloitte, and many more. Besides that you are doing it, it also increases your chance to become noticeable with your dream company.

There are no selections

Here is the most advantage from it. It doesn’t look at who you are, and how does your skill is. The company want to see your commitment, and how you can finish it at your own pace. Probably it’s still new, but if everyone knows about it, they will take the advantage, and they can pursue their dreams. Therefore, it opens opportunities for everyone.

Disadvantage

Despite that, there are some disadvantages that I’ve felt on this internship, they are,

Lack of the working ambience

I don’t have any experience previously on the internship, but at least I know how does the working life is. It really gives us on working some tasks, but the ambience of the office is really lacking while we are doing it. Because of that, the on-site internship will always exist.

Lack of interactions

On Inside Sherpa, there’s a Facebook group to discuss any issues that relate to the internship. Although that exists, it still lacks the soft-skills, such as communication skill. The skill is really required because we will interact with people, and how to communicate effectively is essential to thrive on our career.

Final Thought

Virtual Internship is still a new option to us for doing an internship. It gives you way more opportunity to people because there’s no selection, and also the timeline is way more flexible by our own pace.

But also on the other side, there are some weakness could be improved, especially on the interaction that makes the internship can have an interaction with other participants.

It could be the future of our internship, but it can not fully replace the traditional way of an internship. We still need the soft-skill, and we need the real-life experience while on working.

But still, by making it virtual, it could make everybody regardless of which group they represent, are now able to taste the internship from top companies.