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Spotlight On: IT Internships
Make that chip work!
You may be working hard studying to get a degree, you may have proven your smarts, but do you know what it’s like to work in a real IT position? Hiring managers will get plenty of applicants with the same qualifications as you. The key to getting an IT job is to get some hands-on experience with an IT internship.
Many major companies, such as the Vanguard Group, will take on small groups of interns to show them the ropes. These internship duties do not require grunt work like getting food and coffee. From day one you will get hands on experience. The senior HR manager Dawn Lindberg says, “Our internship program is highly structured. The group comes in as a class. They work together, network together, and present a class project in addition to their other assignments – programming, hardware, Web services or another technical area – from their supervisors. We involve students in the actual day-to-day duties of their department.”
The interviewing process is much like interviewing for a job. It’s yet another benefit to exploring internships — you’re getting practice with the procedures you’ll want to be comfortable with by the time you’re job-hunting.
Specifically for an IT internship, answer questions honestly. If you cannot answer technical questions that you have already claimed to have known, why would the hiring manager want to consider you? If you are up front about the skills you possess, companies know that you are looking to be an intern and know you will learn more through this experience. An awareness of what you know and recognizing what you don’t is good at this stage. Internships are meant to learning experiences, so don’t feel like you need to speak in 1′s and 0′s.
Be sure to show that you are eager to learn, because technology never stops changing. Programming languages some and go, so try to keep an open mind and avoid getting bogged down in learning just systems, or just networking, or just C+, PHP, MySQL, Ruby, etc. An internship is about dipping your toe in the water, not diving head-over-heels into a super-niche skill set.
One of the best things you can do, not only as a student but for the rest of your career, is contribute to open-source projects to hone your skills and add to your resume. Check out SourceForge for a list of open-source projects you can contribute to.