Can an internship help you get a job? A new poll says yes.
A Gallup Poll shows the amount of students who work as an intern during their college years has risen 13% in the last 54 years.
“Fewer than one in four graduates who received their degrees before 1980 strongly agreed that they had taken part in such programs while in school, but the percentage rises incrementally in every decade after,” Sean Seymour and Julie Ray report.
With the unemployment rate dropping to 5.8% as of October, it is still important for every person looking for a job, including college kids, to have a leg up. A 2012 survey found employers that hire recent grads place more weight on internships and jobs than academic credentials.
“As the number of universities increase in the U.S., the competition for better equipping students with the tools to succeed in life will also increase,” Seymour and Ray report. “The ability of a graduate to bridge classroom learning with real-world experience appears paramount to their preparedness for life after college.”