Intern! Intern! Intern!

Now that you have your bomb résumé, you should start talking about internships. It is increasingly becoming harder to find jobs after college. Interning can be used as that step in the door to your career, and might even be easier to do while still in college. 

Why should I Intern?

If you are a graduate with perfect grades and the best major but have been looking for a job for 6 months, then you probably already know the answer to this. For those of you who are still in college, there is still a chance to get your work experience up. An internship will be one of the most important job experiences you have. It is a great way to learn the skills you need to really sale yourself to employers after graduation. Also, internship in the field you are studying in will show employers that you are serious about your future. Even better for you, interning may show that, that career is actually not something that you are willing to commit to.  

Does it Matter where I intern?

ABSOLUTELY! This is an important step in landing your dream career. You want to work for a company that will look great on your résumé. This is supposed to benefit you. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unpaid intern scams. I cannot stress this enough, but DO NOT INTERN FOR FREE! You will know which internships are free by the post acknowledging that you MUST receive academic credit to intern. Paid internships do not require credit. Although some unpaid internships may be with good companies, the law says that an unpaid intern may not take the place of a paid employee. From my own knowledge, this is exactly what companies plan on doing. 

Speaking of my own experience, I have been on interviews where I was asked to:

•Work closely with the Director on projects throughout the season

•Help coordinate appearances, helping to contact potential clients and act as a liaison between the department and the community during the appearance request process

•Assist in the preparation for various events and help execute those events, including but not limited to, auditions and photo shoots

•Responsible for assisting in writing bios, as well as weekly stories during the season

Doesn’t this sound like work? They also wanted me to commit to being an unpaid intern for a year. For me, that meant not being able to pay my rent. Even though this was for a well-known company, I had to understand that because of the nature of the job, I might be walking away without a reference and no money. Therefore, I think that we students should stick together and not take any unpaid internships. This way companies will stop taking advantage of us. NO MORE FREE WORK!  And if any of you are like me, you’re walking away from college with over $30,000 in student loans. Those bills will put a stop to any desire of taking on an unpaid internship.

Well, then where am I supposed to intern?

I know that I just made it more difficult to search for internships by taking away the easiest ones to get, but it is honestly for the best. There are still plenty of internships out there that will pay. I am a bit biased, so I will throw you Disney in the lead. You can be under any major and participate in the Disney College Program. Disney offers plenty of jobs available in the Walt Disney Theme Parks. There are positions in hotels, stores, restaurants, costuming, photography, acting, technology… You get the point! But maybe the Disney spirit is not right for you. Well, I have created a short list of available internships for students of all sorts of majors and GPA status’. Hopefully this will help you on your search!

Of course this isn’t even the half of them. Go on these companies’ websites and see how they would work for you. Some do have GPA requirements, but it’s all for competition. I mean, come on! These are PAID internships. Do not forget, experience is an important factor in your job search after college too.

BE PREPARED!

Yours truly,

      Michaela

I am a student. Where do I start?

I am also a student and I started my college career in entertainment production. I honestly did not figure out what kind of path I would need to take to work in entertainment until my junior year. I was so lost in college, but then I realized that I had all of the tools I needed all along. I loved networking, interning, and technology. My computer skills lead me to developing a well-designed resume. This is one of the first steps to landing your dream job after graduation.

Have a bomb resume!

Employers and sometimes even your networks will want to see what you have been up to. So, it is best to always have a current resume handy. So where do you start? Think about what kind of experience you have in the field. Don’t worry about not having a paid position in that direction. People just want to know that you have some knowledge of what happens in that field. Also, if you already have internet experience, great! This is something I will be covering in a later post. 

 What are your skills?

This leads us to skills. This is a very important aspect of landing your dream job. Your skills alone can score you the job. This is something that helps me to get my internships. Much of my work experience is in customer service and only a few volunteer positions are in my dream field of media production. Unfortunately, this is a field that requires hands-on skills. I found myself being told that I needed to have experience to get experience. Well, I learned that my skills created a loophole in this rule. I was able to expand what I learned from school and give myself a lead on my competition. I would advise everyone to do this also. I went from just working on IMovie and Final Cut Pro at school to exploring other programs like Dreamweaver, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, etc. Therefore, even if you don't have paid work experience already in that particular field, there may be a way around it if you can show that you possess all of the required skills and then some. I was able to show my skills from videos I have edited as a volunteer and minimally on my own resume.

Check it out here!

So try to be creative with your resume. Let your personality shine. Also, don't forget to target the skills needed in order for you to get your dream job. It's all about what you can bring to the table!

Yours truly,

      Michaela

A Magical War on Interns

If you were a college student in 2013, then you may know first-hand what it feels like to wonder how the economy will be once you cross that stage. Unfortunately for those of us who are recent graduates or soon-to-be graduates, the job market hasn’t exactly rebounded like many had predicted. Instead, many students have been jumping to opportunities to take on paid and unpaid internships. I am one of those students. 

I was in my junior year at the University of Hawaii and like many of you, I had no idea what I was going to do once I graduated. To my surprise, Disney came in October to recruit interns for the 2011 Disney College Program. I happened to be one of the two chosen from my university. Although, it was not until I began work at Disneyland that I realized what internships were doing to the economy. 

Working at Disneyland was truly a magical experience for me. I lived in Disney College Program housing only 5 minutes away from the park. I had free admission into the park every single day. And best of all, it was PAID! All of us interns were getting so many hours while working at the park. Little did we know, we were “taking” hours from regular employees with low seniority. You may be asking, “How does that work?” Much like in college, Disneyland employees are given priority number based on how many years they have been on staff. Therefore, the newer employees priority numbers are no match to the 5 year seniority that interns are given. Although, this is most likely due to the housing fees and a few other financial benefits, the regular employees are not too shy to tell interns how they feel about the inequality. Of course, they bully in the most polite way…

Even though I absolutely loved my internship at Disney and will be attending the alumni program, the war on interns continues. Students are nearly required to intern in order to be eligible for the crazy job market. With over one million internships (both paid and unpaid) offered in the United States a year, it is no secret that companies are getting away with job market murder. Even with the many regulations put on the companies that employ interns, it is clear that internships are being offered in place of regular paid positions. This makes me wonder if I will be caught in the same situation as soon as I receive my diploma in the mail (along with my student loan bill). 

Despite the terrible predicament everyone has been placed in, I am still awaiting the start of my alumni internship program with Disney. The market currently gives recent graduates a very small lead for interning for big corporations. So I definitely need to take this opportunity if I am going to ever get a job that will allow me to pay off these loans. Though an unfortunate part of my experience, I believe it was only touching the very surface of our new job market and the war on interns. 

Yours truly,

      Michaela