Thursday, February 16, 2012

Internship postings

According to the COC, about 40% of the first years have been offered an internship; only 15% have accepted. My friends and I debated these numbers as they didn't seem right. The problem here is that is self-reporting - if a student gets a job offer, the details are required to be entered into the database. We don't think that students have been doing so; or at least, haven't been saying they've accepted. There is a policy at the school whereas if you have accepted an offer, you cannot UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES continue to interview or perform internship recruiting activities. A friend of mine thinks that is the primary reason why there are so few accepted offers - people are wanting to play the field. I disagree and think it's the former - i.e lazy classmates.

But for those of us without an internship offer, it's hard not to feel down. I'm very calm and confident about the whole search; it was mentioned to me today that most people by now are panicking since there have been very few postings on our job board and not as many people now are flying out for interviews. I just shrugged - I know this is that lull before March rears its ugly head for post-spring break recruiting. I can't say the same attitude is prevalent with my classmates :)

On a side note, I'm still being somewhat amused by internship postings and how recruiters are selling the internships. One line I've seen a couple of times is along the thread of "you'll be doing real work and not running for coffee and making copies!"
This amuses (if I wasn't amused, I'd be rather irritated) me for a couple of reasons:
1) If there is an internship out there that pays an MBA to run copies and make coffee, damn, that is one company that is overpaying their intern.
2) It's quite juvenile. The vast majority of MBA students already have years of experience under their belt. It's pretty much expected that we're not going to make copies. The fact that a recruiter is putting this in a job posting says that they're really out of touch with the type of people they're trying to recruit, or it's a form posting for undergrads.

Either which way, I know of classmates who have refused to apply to jobs that state this sort of line because of the two reasons. Similar to how career counselors warn us to not send stock cover letters and resumes; this is the recruiter-equivalent. I won't apply to any internship postings that don't have "MBA" specifically requested; to me, if it's not there, then the value of our experience and degree is being wasted.

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