Help Students See How Internships Boost Employability & Salary Potential
Established in 1956, The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is an association that partners with colleges, businesses and students to study job market trends. One area of focus for NACE is internships and the impact they have on students’ employability. In its recently published Job Outlook 2020 survey, NACE found that for the ‘third consecutive year, employers identified internship experience as the top differentiator between two equally qualified job candidates’. This preference for job candidates with internship experience is apparent in students’ job outcomes. According to NACE’s 2019 Student Survey Report, students who had a paid internship ‘received nearly 50 percent more job offers than those who had either an unpaid internship or no internship and the paid interns expect to make $10,000 more than both unpaid and never interns’.
Within the Couragion app, our role models often convey how internships were critical to their success in finding employment. And our data shows that students listen to this advice! In survey questions completed by 2,157 students (66% students of color, 40% female), Couragion asked students about their willingness to complete an internship in order to be better qualified for a job. After viewing Couragion’s role model videos, 92% of students cited a willingness to complete a paid internship while 69% of students were willing to complete an unpaid internship. There was no significant difference in these percentages when dissecting the data by gender, race/ethnicity, or grade level.
The Couragion data demonstrates that when educated about the benefits of an internship, the large majority of students are interested in pursuing such jobs. As educators, parents, and mentors, we must inform students about the benefits of internships and help students to navigate the process of obtaining them. Sharing the above NACE data with your students is one great way to start these conversations.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1660021. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
