Student Resumes: Chapter Three – Parents’ Perspectives on the Importance of Internships

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.