Want a full-time job at graduation? Find an internship or enroll in a cooperative education program. And do a good job for your employer.
According to a national survey, employers say they extend job offers to almost 70 percent of their interns. In 2001, they offered jobs to 57 percent. That means, increasingly, employers look to their internship programs to find new hires. The trends for co-op programs follow those of internship hiring. Co-op programs have a stronger relationship to recruiting full-time hires than do internship programs; as a result, the overall percentage of organizations that use co-ops as a recruiting tool is higher than that seen with internship programs.
Internships are typically one-time work or service experiences related to the student’s major or career goal. Internships can be paid or unpaid, and the student may or may not receive academic credit for performing the internship. A co-op provides students with multiple periods of work in which the work is related to the student’s major or career goal. Virtually all co-op positions are paid, and the vast majority involves some form of academic credit.
The trend toward using these on-the-job programs to feed new employees into hiring organizations is fueled, in part, by employer satisfaction with interns and internship programs.
Almost 90 percent of employer who use internship programs to hire say they are very satisfied with their interns—and say hiring from the intern pool is one of their most effective tools for finding new college graduates.
There is some indication that full-time recruits coming out of internship/co-op programs are “more successful” as employees than those drawn from outside of the internship/co-op process, according to the survey. It found that interns who became full-time hires were more likely to stick with an organization than their co-workers who didn’t go through the program.
So where can you find your internship or co-op program? First, check with your career services office. Job listings may be posted on the career services web site. Also, employers find interns at career fairs, when they recruit on campus, and through former interns. They also reach potential interns through faculty contacts and outreach to clubs, fraternities and sororities.