Business Summer Internships: Showing Off and Honing your Real-World Skills
For many students, internships are the most straightforward way to show interest in particular subjects. It allows them to show both their employer and their college that they are genuinely fascinated by this career and subject. It also allows them to gain invaluable experience that will undoubtedly help them. This is especially true for business majors since it shows they have gained much experience in a real-life business setting.
There is no better time to intern than over the summer when students have opportunities to work almost full-time and less pressure from school tasks. In this blog post, we will share the benefits of internships to business majors (or those looking to head into business), examples of internships organized by specialization, and how to get started finding business summer internships.
Why are Business Summer Internships Beneficial for Students?
Internships, in general, help students gain experience with real-world situations in their ideal industry or job and demonstrate effectively to employment and admission organizations that these students have this much-needed experience.
This is even more important for business majors or high school students interested in pursuing business in college. It shows that the student has earned much-needed real-world experience dealing with management or the economy, many skills that may otherwise be overlooked if the student were in other majors. There are many essential skills for business. Here, we will show how a well-chosen internship can help you earn or hone most of them.
Leadership, Management, and Collaboration: While interns may not often be put as team leaders, they will undoubtedly learn skills from their superiors and collaboration skills when working with their peers, whether employees or other interns.
Finance Management: Interning specifically in financial-related jobs can allow interns to gain this experience, but it is probably the hardest
Engaging with Customers or Consumers: Often, interns have to deal with decisions that can affect customer experience. Sometimes, interns also have to do tasks such as customer service, significantly increasing their experience in this aspect.
Problem Solving and Decision Making: While interning, students will often run into problems they have never encountered before due to their lack of experience. Solving them, even with the help of others, can help students gain this skill.
Networking: Last comes the most straightforward task that can be satisfied by any internship. It’s easy to network since you are networking with employees and managers at your internship as soon as you begin talking with them. You can often build great relationships with them throughout the internship. There’s a reason why most interns are eventually hired at the companies they intern for.
Examples of Business Summer Internships
Generally, business summer interns can hold a myriad of positions at any business. However, there are some general examples that you can look at when choosing your internship.
Interested in business summer internships for high school students? Check out this related blog post.
Product Marketing / Sales
Product marketing internships are great for those wishing to enter Marketing or Sales majors.
Usually, tasks will involve:
Analyzing market trends
Interpreting product feedback and adjusting it due to the feedback
Studying strategies of competitors
It’s a great way to hone skills like:
Adjusting to the flow of the market
Marketing and adjusting products
Adapting to strategies from competitors
Management
Management internships are great for those wishing to enter the Business Management and Administration major.
Usually, tasks will involve:
Developing tools
Conducting analyses of the business
Discussing future strategies with other “departments”
It’s a great way to hone skills like:
Strategizing about what is best to do for the business going forward
Analyzing what strategies are helpful and in which ways
Learn what is involved in running and enhancing a business
Artificial Intelligence + Business + Finance
Inspirit AI offers live online artificial intelligence summer programs that expose high school students to fundamental AI programming skills and guides them to build a socially impactful AI project, developed and taught by Stanford and MIT graduates. In this program, students can work on projects at the intersection of AI and business and finance. For example, students may work on an algorithmic trading project to learn how AI can be used to predict returns on portfolios.
Consulting
Management and Business Consulting internships are great for those wishing to enter almost any business major.
Usually, tasks will involve:
Gathering data for analysis and recommendations
Presenting the data to a large group of people
Implementing changes that are suggested
It’s a great way to hone skills like:
Research and data collection, as well as analysis
Presenting in practical ways and communicating your intentions
Executing plans that you think of
How to Get Started and Find Business Internships
So, how do you choose a good internship? That comes down to what you decide to do. As we have said previously, the “internship pool” for Business majors is probably the largest of any major, involving companies in every industry. We advise mostly choosing jobs more suited for the major you wish to head into. Since many interns at a company are offered jobs at the company, we also encourage you to apply to places you might want to end up after you graduate.
To find these internships, we recommend doing your research online, but most online job websites (Indeed, LinkedIn, etc.) that list various actual employment openings also have a lot of information and postings about internship openings.
For instance, this Indeed webpage provides a lot of insight into both average pay for business summer interns and ideas for careers that involve them specifically. Interning at any company that does these things or even interning in these roles will provide all the benefits of business summer internships.
Pursuing internships before heading into regular employment has many benefits. We are excited to see what changes you can make to your interning company and how this experience will help you in the future!
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
