Watching a child about to embark upon a career search can be as proud and frightening a moment as when that child first wobbled off on a shiny new two-wheeler:  both experiences can be bumpy rides.  Responsible parents dart forward to protect their children from mishaps and, with the proper guidance, send them off again on the right path.  But for a child soon to graduate high school, technical school, college, graduate school, or professional school, the road meandering through a shaky economy can be precarious and circuitous.  Investing aspirations and finances in their children’s college educations, parents justifiably expect to realize returns on their investments, and not solely for purposes of remitting the considerable debt incurred with student loans.  Every loving parent desires his or her child to experience security and stability through a focused career path, and yet, our economy has proven that job security has become, if not an obsolete term, then a misnomer.  Yet, in crafting high school student resumes, technical school student resumes, college student resumes, graduate school student resumes, and professional school student resumes, there do exist viable strategies and tools upon which parents can capitalize to safeguard their children from the worst potholes scarring the road of the post-graduation employment search.  The best of these tactics revolves around crucial internship positions.

On student resumes, internship experience on has, time and again, paved the way for meaningful interviews leading to permanent placement and career advancement.  Employers place significant emphasis upon internships, for they serve as testing grounds for previously untested candidates viewed as potential risks among a more-seasoned workforce.  Managers often base their decisions to hire, or not to hire, upon the skills and knowledge that students have acquired through internship positions.  Although an internship may have been truly valuable, an applicant is often unable to articulate its worth via his or her student resume and cover letter: the very documents that must initiate face-to-face dialogues with employers!  Some internships, unfortunately, prove irrelevant to a student’s future career goals; the job responsibilities may, in the grand scheme of the company’s operations, have been inconsequential.  Or, first-time exposure to a specific industry or job function may have taught the student that that industry or position was not, in actuality, what he or she wished to pursue on a serious career path.  In either scenario, it is imperative to present the internship experience as positive and educational.  Conscientious parents, therefore, will want to give serious consideration to contracting the services of a professional resume writing service, in order to fully showcase their children’s internship experience.

Skilled in the development of student resumes, a resume writing service of quality and longevity will discuss with students, in detail, the functions of the internships.  Services of this nature ask the right questions that elicit the responses, to be configured in writing, that prove most pertinent to hiring managers facing a plethora of job candidates from the college and university pools.  With knowledge of a broad range of industries and job titles, the resume service will not only understand the intern’s role within the department in which he or she has served; the writers will see the much larger picture of the employer’s mission and how the student supported, even at the internship level, the realization of those objectives.  The flavor of the internship, then, will be one of a symbiotic experience that enabled the student to develop a strong foundation of viable skills even as he/she made contributions to the employer.

Equally critical, to strengthen the internship experience that spanned but several months, the resume writer will highlight part-time experience, school-related activities, and/or community service to their fullest advantage, and will create an articulate, accompanying cover letter.  Together, these documents will paint an accurate portrait of the recent graduate as a well rounded, industrious, and energetic team player:  in other words, a good employment risk.

In healthier economies, it was common practice for employers to offer internship positions to students in their senior and/or junior years of college.  So prevalent was this practice at one time that most students assumed an internship to be a “given,” an integral and once-unquestionable process of transitioning from the role of student to that of a contributing member of the workforce.  Today’s market landscape, however, has made internships more difficult to secure.  Grasping for solvency, companies undergoing downsizing and outsourcing initiatives can no longer afford to “give” anything away.

On-campus career counselors once serving as viable resources are hard pressed in this economy to negotiate internships for their constituencies.  Tomorrow’s business professionals must therefore be savvy, proactive, and creative in ferreting out opportunities for internships that represent the “make or break factor” on student resumes.  If your degree is on the horizon, you must construct and vigilantly follow through with a well-planned strategy designed to provide you with greater opportunities for securing an internship.

First, give serious consideration to the potential of entering a company on a voluntary basis.  While it may, at first, seem ludicrous to ask to work for no pay, consider the benefits of such a game plan.  Your competitors (the other members of your graduating class) are demanding salaries at a time when most companies are tightening the belt.  Make a good case for your request via a well-written resume and cover letter, and you will be perceived as resourceful and serious; your chances for gaining an internship will increase dramatically.  Once positioned among the workforce, you will have gained the valuable first-hand experience that employers demand.  Upon graduation, should you choose to apply to the same company for full-time status, you will retain an edge over other job seekers as you will have gained familiarity with the culture of the company, including its policies, procedures, expectations, and interpersonal dynamics.

Even if a job within the company in which you have served as a voluntary, unpaid intern does not materialize, your time with the company has proven extremely useful, for you can highlight that experience on your resume and cover letter.  Support those documents with a strong letter of recommendation from your immediate supervisor, and you will be able to present yourself as more marketable and competitive.

Whether you choose the route of a voluntary intern or pursue a traditional, paying internship, you should determine the companies to which you will apply.  As the number of jobs has become finite, broaden your search.  For example, if your college major is Chemistry and you aspire to join a pharmaceutical firm, by all means, apply to the drug manufacturers.  However, include within your search corporations that develop and produce other, chemical-based products, such as plastics, fragrances, cosmetics, and synthetic flavorings.  Although you may not land an internship with a pharmaceutical manufacturer, an internship in another environment will provide you with hands-on experience in setting up, conducting, analyzing, and recording results of laboratory tests that impact the development, validation, and manufacture of a product.  On student resumes, these general skills will demonstrate more value to a drug company than a resume lacking in practical laboratory experience.

In compiling your research concerning potential employers, determine, if at all possible, the decision makers with whom you wish to communicate. These would be the human resources manager accountable for the particular division in which you are interested or the manager currently assigned to that department. Although most opportunities necessitate communication with employers via general or industry-specific Internet job boards as well as companies’ proprietary job sites, some positions are not so evident and accessible in this manner.  Laser-printed on appropriate stationery, addressed to the appropriate parties, stamped, and mailed, well-crafted student resumes and cover letters have opened doors simply because their presentation cannot be overlooked in an electronic shuffle.

In the third and final chapter of this series, we will explore internships and their value from the perspective of graduates’ parents.

Armed only with their college degrees, future graduates attempting to enter the workforce will find this economy a harsh reality.  Employers seek not merely a degree but real-world experience on student resumes; they need to deduce potential contributions of prospective staff members, based upon evaluations of candidates’ experiences and accomplishments.  Enrolled in full-time curricula and frequently hustling unrelated, part-time jobs, students confront the dichotomy and challenge of presenting employers with germane, practical experience.  College internships are more than the critical progression from knowledge gained solely in the classroom to on-the-job exposure to one’s chosen field.  For a student, they are the vital distinction between these two elements.

Internships, therefore, are the hub of student resumes.  As the culmination-to-date of one’s education, internships allow the student to present learning-in-action beyond the restrictive language of a formal job description.  No one works in a vacuum; directly or indirectly, every job title impacts an internal business process or processes, and/or an external client base.  This information represents fundamental performance metrics by which employers judge students’ worth in the business arena.  If you have not yet attained your degree and lack relevant experience, it is not enough to state on your student resume that you accurately processed 500 purchase orders in an 8-hour period.  Does that number equate to your surpassing a goal or underachieving?  Who placed those purchase orders, and what do the sales represent?  Consider this statement as presented on a resume:  “Processed 500 orders daily, against departmental goal of 275, for a customer base of electronics manufacturers generating $17.2 million in annual sales.”  Qualifying and, whenever possible, quantifying your information will give employers a broader picture of your initiative and bottom-line contributions on your student resume.  It gives hiring managers the impetus to schedule an interview with you!

In preparing student resumes, one must not negate the importance of a cover letter.  The prevalence of the Internet has, at its most basic, facilitated the gathering, transmission, and analysis of a huge amount of data spanning myriad topics.  What it has not done is hone the language skills of students who grew up using computers.  Employers seeking new blood are keenly aware of this.  Knowing that cover letters are narratives as well as introductions into resumes, hiring managers often use cover letters as gauges for applicants’ written language skills.  In addition to being succinct and meaningful, the structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation of your cover letter must be perfect.  If they are not, your opportunities for securing interviews will significantly dwindle.  In this economy, no employer has the luxury of leaving a report, a presentation, or an email open to misinterpretation or ridicule by an executive manager or an account that generates revenue.

Now that you understand the value of internships as the key marketing tool on an effective student resume and cover letter, we will examine, in Chapter Two of this series of articles, the mechanics and strategies involved in securing internships in an ailing economy.