“It’s still one of the best avenues they have into the job market.”
Marcia Jones
, manager of employment and career services at Lorain County Community College
At 36, Amy Cosgrove wasn’t your typical intern.
When she landed an unpaid position at Auburn Career Center in Concord Township last fall, she went in with a plan in mind.
At the end of 16 days, spread over as many weeks, Cosgrove had developed an online training course for K-12 teachers to prevent and respond to cyberbullying. The center can market the course, and Cosgrove can cite it on her résumé.
“It was really a lot of work, but I can now honestly say I can put an online course together,” she says. Cosgrove graduated from Cleveland State University in December with a master’s degree in adult learning and development.
Internships, long associated with younger students in their early 20s, are now attracting older people hoping to change careers and learn new skills.
“It’s still one of the best avenues they have into the job market,” says Marcia Jones, manager of employment and career services at Lorain County Community College.
The overall number of regional internships has remained fairly consistent, according to Halley Marsh, program manager for NEOintern, a Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education venture that matches employers with interns.
Some larger companies are cutting back, she says, but many smaller companies are adding positions because they aren’t able to hire full-time employees.
Career counselors have noticed a trend toward more unpaid internships.
Two or three years ago, Jones may have discouraged unpaid internships. But not now. “In the reality of today’s market, I think you need to be open to all opportunities,” she says.
And no pay doesn’t equal no value. Interns who make the most of their time learn new skills and increase their opportunities to network with people in the field.
Competition for internships can be fierce, says Kelley Stillwagon, a career counselor at Kent State University. Younger students are now competing with alumni with advanced degrees and years of experience. She suggests thinking outside of the box. If you can’t land a traditional internship, consider calling a company or organization and pitching a specific project.
George Yamoah, 35, of Parma Heights, completed a paid, full-time internship for a certified public accounting firm in Solon last winter and spring as part of his studies for a graduate degree in accounting at Cleveland State University.
He plans to return for another internship there this spring while he’s earning his MBA.
Yamoah, who earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science in his native Ghana, was thankful for the experience in a new field. Half the company’s interns were his age and half were undergraduates.
The training really kicked in, he says, when he stopped taking copious notes at work and started really listening and trying to follow examples.
“When you go into the field, be willing to listen and learn,” Yamoah says. “Sometimes applications are very different than theories.”
Cosgrove suggests creating your own leads.
Instead of simply looking for internship postings, figure out what you want to learn. Then research organizations doing that kind of work. Call around and make your pitch.
“The more specific you get with your goals, the more specific you need to get with finding the right people in the right fields,” she says.
And be ready to sacrifice for a long-term goal. To make time for her internship, Cosgrove dropped from five to four days at work and took a resulting drop in pay and higher health insurance premiums. So she needed to make sure the commitment would be worthwhile.
As one professor told her, if you can’t add three new items to your résumé after an internship, you may want to rethink the choice.