Looking for a Summer Internship? Try a Startup!

Jonathan Aharon
Jul 25, 2017 · 7 min read

When the summer rolls around once school lets out, most college students and even some high school kids will look to get an internship for the summer. We choose to do this because we want professional experience to put on our resume, a chance to prove that we can apply the skills we have learned and proven in the classroom, and to find out if we actually like the industry that we hope to go into after getting our degrees.

However, not all of these summer internship opportunities are created equal. While you may believe that it is in your best interest to get the position with the company that is the most widely known, this is not always the best case. In fact, often it is actually more beneficial for your summer job to be in a startup than to be in an established company. This is actually the situation I find myself in currently. After wrapping up freshman year of college, here I am working as an intern at 200 Apps this summer. My experiences thus far have convinced me that you should highly consider working for a startup. Here are 5 benefits I’ve experienced in working for a startup that I would have been unable to experience as a member of an established company.

1. Adapting On the Fly

When you arrive for an internship with a startup, there is no sort of introductory course or training to prepare you for the job you are going into. Instead, you are forced to adapt to meet challenges that you didn’t expect or know about prior to taking the position. This allows you to work on your ability to adapt to situations, which will greatly enhance your professional growth by giving you the opportunity to make decisive decisions to adapt to a given situation in a timely manner. For example, coming in to intern at 200 Apps I wasn’t really sure what I would be expected to do. So my first day I had to talk with my boss and figure out where I could best add value to the company. That’s how I found out I was going to be doing some blog writing for 200 Apps, on my first day on the job. Suddenly, on the fly I had to figure out blog topics, the format I was going to put together the blogs in, the material I would research to inspire myself to write about the topics I would come up with, and more. This type of adaption would probably not happen at an established company because they would give you a very narrowed focus on what to do.

2. Professional Development

For an established company, it doesn’t really make too much sense to spend time developing the interns. This is because it all becomes for nothing when they go back to school in the fall. They have a long-term plan and vision for the next 3–5 years or so. In other words, their calculus doesn’t change much to allow for the intern who will only be here for a a couple of months. On the other hand, startups are not thinking too far ahead. The long-term plan for startups is fairly short-term, meaning it can be as short-term as a month and maybe a couple of years at the most. Since they are more concerned about the now rather than the future, the startups will more often put you as an intern in a position to do work that matters to the company now. This means that they will make sure you understand what you are doing and leave you to implement it in an efficient way. This leads startups to generally implement more time into developing their interns to accomplish their tasks, since their tasks will more often than not matter more to the company than they would with a more established company. For example, one of my fellow interns at 200 Apps has spent time working on contacting companies to participate in our incubator program. This has a tremendous impact on the company, and so his supervisor made sure he understood how to talk to these companies, which companies we want to target, and more. As an intern, getting the responsibility to contact other companies on the behalf of our company is a huge opportunity for growth that it would be hard to get without being a part of the startup.

3. You Will Understand Your Company

When you are working for an established company, it usually has many departments. Since you will not be around for much time in the long-term, you won’t get much info about other departments. This is usually not the case at startups. Due to being a small company, we all know about what we are doing and the general gist of the business plan. I know what I’m doing and the purpose of what I am doing. But I also understand what the other interns are doing, and why they do that. I know what my boss does and understand why he does that. I know what the coders do and understand why they do that. I know the general idea of what most people do. I have a good general idea of what our business plan is, and I’ve only been a member of the company for a little over a month now. This type of transparency and understanding of the companies intentions and actions is something you are unlikely to get exposure to as an intern unless you are in a startup.

4. Responsibility and Respect

At big established companies, often you aren’t really all that important to the company. You want to be learning and applying skills you’ve learned, that’s why you wanted an internship. But, the company may just be interested in your labor. For example, one of my friends applied for and received an internship at a big-time hospital. She was absolutely thrilled to get it and accepted the position. Unfortunately, she later found that all she was asked to do was to do menial tasks such as making copies and getting other employees their coffee. This type of thing unfortunately happens more often than we would like in internships for established companies. Making things worse is the fact that with the lack of work that makes a real impact on the company, there is a lack of respect shown for you in the workplace by your co-workers. In startups, you are more likely to do things that have an impact with a company. This is simply due to the fact that there are less employees, which means that there are more opportunities for interns to actually make a meaningful difference in the company. Your co-workers see this, recognize the value that you bring to the company, and thus they actually treat you as a co-worker. In my experience here at 200 apps, at lunch I’ve sat with co-workers and talked about what we do, and we also socialize about other things. In startup culture, you don’t feel like you are “just the intern”. Instead, you are the guy that’s working on “content” or “coding” or another skill. In the startup paradigm, you are treated as just another co-worker and you get the responsibilities and respect that comes along with it.

5. No Bureaucracy

In established companies, often there is a lot of corporate bureaucracy. Sometimes if you have a question, you must ask your supervisor. Your supervisor may need to ask his team leader. His team leader may need to ask the head of the department. The department head may have to ask the CIO, CFO, or CEO. Communication in an established company can be difficult because of this type of hierarchy. If you ask a question or need to report something, it make have to go through a lot of people before you hear back. This is not an issue at startups though. At startups, you work very close to the high-ups at the company so communication is easy. In addition, due to the small company size, things are fairly transparent from the founders on down so communication is very straightforward and everyone has real responsibility to take on. For example, my boss who I’ve had the pleasure of working for here at 200 apps is the Vice President of 200 apps. I work right next to him and can get all questions answered from him. The lack of employee size and the responsibility you must undertake results in direct and clear communication with superiors.

Jonathan Aharon

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathansaharon

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