Internships: Faster way to jobs for recent graduates.
If you’re a student dreaming of launching a technical career after graduation, you’re probably already thinking of how to differentiate yourself from the over 15 million other graduates with the same dream.
Sure, your GPA matters. As does the quality of your class projects, your extracurriculars, and even the part-time jobs you might’ve held to help pay your way through school. But computer science graduates increasingly find that landing a post-collegiate tech career often hinges on one key factor:
Your internships.
That’s right — what was once a way for your parents to get you off the couch and out of the house during summer break has turned into a deciding factor in whether you land your dream job.
And it makes sense. Internships benefit both the prospective companies where you hope to launch your tech career and you, the student-turned-job seeker. Here’s how:
#1. Internships Give You Real-World Work Experience
There’s no question that college is great for learning the processes and procedures needed for a successful tech career.
But when it comes to putting those newly-learned skills into practice, there’s no substitute for a real-world working environment. Classroom projects — where you’re often working alone and without the time constraints you’ll find in the real world — don’t offer a realistic perspective on what it takes to succeed in tech. Exposure to the collaborative, teamwork-focused, and often high-pressure environment of a real tech company ensures you can hold your own and work well with others. It also helps you understand what you’re getting yourself into with a tech career.
#2. They Help You Refine Your Career Interests
One of the biggest benefits of an internship for college students comes from the exposure you’ll get to different tech career paths. In school, you might see your career developing in one direction, only to find during an internship that your true passion actually lies in a different field.
#3. They Help Companies Recruit Top Talent
Today’s interns do a lot more than make copies and go on Starbucks runs. If you manage to land an internship at a top tech company like Facebook, expect to be put to work. Why?
Because top tech companies use their internship programs like bullpens for future employees. Rather than spend considerable time and money trying to pull talent from a competitor, companies like Google, and Facebook invest in developing young talent right out of the gates in their tech career. And so, to assess whether you’d be a great future hire, they want to see what you’re capable of contributing, how you solve problems, and how you work with the rest of the team.
Of course, this is a big benefit to you, too. Top interns are often fortunate enough to leave college with a diploma in one hand and a job offer in the other.
Ready to find your next internship?
Slatecube can help.
With tens of internships available across nearly every major tech company, you’re bound to find an opportunity that can help catapult your tech career after graduation.
Here are a few companies hiring interns now on Slatecube:
- Shule Direct — Tanzania
- Invoice.ng — Lagos, Nigeria
- Alithea — Lagos, Nigeria
