The State of Internships in the Philippines (and How They Could Be Better)

a.k.a. The Sykap Origin Story as told by JD

“Most of the time, I was in the pantry just watching TV”

“My internship was for 3 months, we were able to finish the project in just 1 month so the assigned person just signed our clearance and allowed us to not go to the office anymore.”

Those were two of my colleagues sharing their internship experiences.

If you can relate to them, I send you my sympathies. These horror stories reflect the state of internships eight years ago and now. If nothing is done, the next generation might also suffer the same fate.

Then again, these just might be anecdotal evidence. So we tried to validate and surveyed the students of today: what didn’t you like about your internship?

Respondents mentioned that they had problems with the schedule, the lack of allowance… one even said that it was the rude assistant pharmacist that ruined the internship experience. And though some may say that these can all be solved with a proper setting of expectations, other responses from the survey cannot be overlooked:

“Stuff that is unrelated to my work.“

“The lack of education that I got during my experience”

“No guidance and no structure”

Saddening, right?

When we asked the students what they think is the most important part of the internship, the majority (88.1% to be exact) agreed to one aspect: experience.

We believe internships are supposed to be learning experiences.

The problem is most companies see interns as a source of cheap — or worse, free — labor. Don’t get me wrong, there are companies that provide decent internships. The problem is when we asked these companies where they got their last three interns, the answers were just permutations of [top school A], [top school B], and [top school C].

Access to decent internships is limited, especially for not-so-popular colleges. But we believe that no matter what the school, there will always be students who are self-starters and can excel in internships.

This is why we created Sykap. We want to level the playing field by being the bridge between companies and students, regardless of school, regardless of background. We want to make sure that the internship experience will prepare them to make the transition to the workforce easier. We will provide them with foundational training aligned with the requirements of our partner companies, giving them the recruitment advantage they need.

As a bonus, we want to enable a convergence of knowledge. Our Sykap Scouts (a.k.a. interns) will belong to batches and will get to collaborate with each other. Imagine an engineer, an accountant, a nurse, a computer programmer, a communications major, all sharing their knowledge from their respective disciplines. Imagine that group applying the ideas they get from others into their own disciplines, implementing the borrowed concepts and frameworks. Imagine the innovation enabled by that!

At first, we wanted Sykap to be a provider of better internship experiences. But it might end up being more than that, creating lasting impact.

If you’re a student, a fresh grad, or just someone who loves to learn, apply to the different internships available offered by our partner startup through our site www.sykap.com

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