Friday, December 12, 2008

Summer internships?

The bad economy already has people thinking about jobs -- it is, I am sure, going to be a challenging year (years?) for people graduating.

I was wondering if there would also be an effect on summer internship programs. Summer interns are often a different budget line item, but it's hard to believe that the Microsoft/Google/Yahoo/everywhere else programs, for both undergraduates and graduates, won't be curtailed in this environment.

I haven't heard anything about summer internships yet, and though it's a bit early, late December/early January is usually when I start get reminders from people to have good students apply for the summer. Can anyone comment (anonymously if needed) if they have any actual information?

3 comments:

Daniel Tunkelang said...

I think the problem is not just whether companies have budget for intern salaries, though that is a factor. But the bigger factors are likely to be:

1) Can the companies afford to divert full-time employees from their regular responsibilities to supervise and mentor interns?

2) How many full-time employees are companies looking to hire in the following year? The main ROI for a summer internship program is converting interns to full-time hires.

Anonymous said...

Some companies have hiring freezes, and since internships are often used to evaluate potential new hires, there are fewer opportunities for next summer.

Anonymous said...

At the research lab where I work, the number of summer interns we are going to be allowed to hire (in all of research) has been cut.