The summer internship has become a rite of passage for young men and women. It’s that time between your junior and senior year when you spend the summer working for a company that just may employ you after you graduate, which makes your senior year just a little less pressure filled giving you more time to drink crappy beer and play on your iPhone. As somebody who experienced an internship that was akin to jabbing oneself in the throat with a cattle prod I am officially declaring myself qualified to give advice on the subject. Not to get too heavy or anything but this is not a decision to be taken lightly. My first bit of advice is try to land offers with more than one company. This gives you options and you’re not pressured into taking the only crappy offer you get. Apply to any and everything that seems quasi interesting and hear what all of them have to say. You might learn that a company you thought sucked is actually pretty damn cool so remember that folks, options are key. If you are lucky enough to have options, take them seriously and do not under any circumstances choose an internship solely based on salary. This is a mistake and I’ll tell you why. Rarely will the difference in salary be so big that it will change your life within a ten to twelve week period. Stick with the company that makes more sense for you and your future. If you have an offer from the “Alliance of Hot Large Breasted Blondes” for thirteen bucks an hour and an offer from the “Legion Of Old Guys Who Suck” for fifteen bucks an hour this should not be a hard decision. I learned this the very hard way when I turned down an offer from a good company I probably would have had a lot of fun at to accept an offer for a few bucks more an hour at a company that I considered to be more “prestigious”, a term that in today’s society doesn’t really matter or even exist. I’m not a man of many regrets but this is one of them and I paid dearly for my mistake. Because of my utter stupidity I had to spend ten weeks of my life at an internship where my “mentor” made my life a living hell. He was assigned to me in order to guide me through the internship and teach me the ways of the company but opted to belittle me at every turn. I would not piss on this individual if he was on fire but would likely piss on him if he were not on fire. You will likely be assigned a mentor as well so before you jump into anything try and find out as much as you can about how the mentoring process works exactly because you will spend a lot of time with this person all summer long and you don’t want to get stuck with a gremlin looking, coffee breath having, petty, stained shirt wearing loser like I did. Your internship will only be as good as your mentor is so try and get a mentor who is a rising star in the company instead of a 50 year old in middle management clinging to his job for dear life. The rising star wants to climb but isn’t likely to view you as actual competition. He’s probably so happy with himself that he’ll love having somebody who will hang on his every word. The old guy in middle management feels threatened by the janitor. Your mentor can ruin your summer or they can secure you a job after graduation so keep all this in mind. Another important thing to do is find out what you will actually be doing during your internship. When I did my internship I was under the impression that I would be building relationships with new clients and maintaining relationships with established clients. Instead, I spent the summer driving around aimlessly in my car from account to account with my cock in my hand like Willy Loman. I was often instructed to put together presentations in PowerPoint and spreadsheets in Excel which I’m pretty sure served no purpose at all other than to drive me to a point where I wanted to rub my erect penis on the elderly secretary’s forearm so I could be fired for sexual harassment. Make sure you know what your duties will be. Don’t be a snob about it because if you’re working for the right person picking up Starbucks can be a learning experience but make sure you have a good idea of what you’re getting into. Seriously, having no idea why you’re doing something is infuriating. I was often assigned projects where I was to find the solution to problems that had no solution. They knew it and they knew I knew it. Why is this territory selling three more units that this territory if they’re both using the same pricing model? What the hell do I know? It’s three units. Three more people probably drove by that day. It was all busywork and I didn’t learn a thing from it. The next step is to find out about the culture of the company. That’s such stupid terminology. Whenever I hear the term corporate culture I picture old guys in suits slaughtering a goat in the conference room. But this is very important. There’s no way you can totally find out the culture of a company just by an interview but take notice of the people around you and how they act. How are they speaking? Are they cordial to each other? I found out too late that the company I interned with had a corporate culture of two thousand fuckfaces willing to stab each other in the back for an 80k a year job. (Note: If you’re going to stab somebody in the back make sure it’s for a hell of a lot more than 80k) All of the lemmings also used the same lingo such as the word commonalities. Really? Commonalities? Could you not just say to look at item X and item Y and see what they have in common? On several occasions I wanted to tell my mentor that I found several commonalities in the breasts of his wife and sister. Find out the agenda beforehand if possible. A lot of internships are designed to completely immerse the intern into the company. They have every second planned out and it all revolves around you learning about the company and spending time with people in it. Having every second of every day planned out for you can get very annoying very quickly. It gets to a point where if the agenda allots an hour to bang Mila Kunis in the ass it’ll still piss you off. Everything has a company spin to it so you always feel like you’re at work. You could be at Sea World and you’ll have a distinct feeling that you’re at work. During my internship, we had two overnight business trips which were both equally horrific. One was to Atlantic City, a place I like to go if I need to get a few hours of Blackjack out of my system or I want to get drunk with friends but not really a place I want to go for a business trip. These were seriously two of the worst days of my life as all they consisted of were a bunch of “rah-rah pump you up, Tony Robbins style seminars” where all of the employees cracked up hysterically at inside company jokes as if Richard Pryor was on stage telling them. The second trip was to Virginia, which was more of the same plus a forced trip to an amusement park, which sucked the moment I realized I wasn’t six and on a trip to Disneyland with my parents and that I was being held there against my will. Now, as far as the pump you up rallies go, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit you’ll probably be as disgusted as I was. I personally could never get that excited about a company I have no ownership in unless they are paying me a boatload of money and I mean a boatload. Some people thrive in this type of setting however so if you feel it’s for you then go for it. You might be able to make a nice living. All I’m saying is that you should be aware of what you’re getting into. Here’s a big one so pay attention. Many internships in, let’s say, the music industry, even at the hottest and most legit record labels are unpaid. I guess it’s because a lot of people clamor for the positions and it’s basically standard industry practice at this point so if you want to be in the music business it’s probably a hoop you’re going to have to jump through. Unfortunately, a lot of people take advantage of this by saying they’re a record label, posting an ad for an unpaid internship on Craigslist, and using you to pass out flyers for their unsigned and usually crappy “artist”. Look into any music industry internship thoroughly and try and stay with the major labels and big time independent labels or else you could end up with a boss who runs a “label” out of his mom’s basement and has no music industry experience whatsoever. That is a waste of a summer and not even worth putting on your resume. Even worse than this is somebody who tries to get you to pay for an internship. Never under any circumstances pay anybody to let you work for them. It’s a total scam and no legitimate employer of any kind would have anything to do with this practice. If you feel like you’re getting roped into this type of situation run as fast as you can and never deal with those people again. Better yet, report them to somebody. I don’t know who exactly you would report that to but if you do then do it because there’s nothing worse than scamming a working person out of their money. With all that being said, this economy is absolutely horrible so you might need to think outside of the box. If absolutely nothing comes up for you then go to a reputable businessman in your neighborhood, maybe a lawyer or somebody who owns a real estate development company and ask them if you can work for free. People are pretty quick to hire if they don’t have to pay a salary. If all else fails and you can’t land a “conventional” internship, which I hate to say, but is a real possibility in today’s job market then get a job at the supermarket as a cashier, at a restaurant as a waiter, or making lattes at your local Starbucks. It’s not the same as being able to network at the hottest hedge fund in New York City but it’s good honest work that pays and any future employer will appreciate the work and life experience you gained. With all of this said, every internship, even the worst ones, have their good points. In my situation, while my internship was horrible I did meet some nice people and I had a few laughs here and there but the bad far outweighed the small amount of good. Make sure you do something you enjoy and take the decision seriously but don’t stress too much because as you can see there are a million ways to spend the summer between your junior and senior year. Good luck guys.
Article By: Jon DaBove
