A First Step or a Summer Fling? A Closer Look At Internships

The heat of summer is also the heat of internship season—college students are on a break between semesters, graduates are making their first career moves after being done with classes, and crossing the halfway point of the year means many stints that last three or six months are beginning and ending.

Those first steps into the workplace can feel like you’re stepping into a whole new world compared to student life or any other experience. But job postings reveal they’re also significantly different from comparable non-intern jobs in the same fields. If we understand how internships connect to the rest of the job market, we can understand not just how careers begin, but how they evolve and develop across industries. Any effort to build a future-ready workforce needs to include not just those who have established their careers, but also those taking their first steps. 

From Classroom To Career? Education Requirements and Skills

We might think of internships as something you do for class credit as well as a paycheck, but postings data show that they aren't just for college students: nearly half of all internship postings (45.4%) require a bachelor’s degree or more, suggesting that internships are as often a post-grad launchpad as a college-era experience.

Either way, it remains true that internships are generally one of the first jobs workers have in their industry, making them distinct from other job postings. We can see that difference by comparing the skills requested for internship jobs to others. 

Internship jobs require more fundamental skills in job postings than non-intern ones. For example, when we think about what a software engineer does, the simplest description would be that they’re writing code, then reviewing and revising it. In job postings for software engineers, we see corresponding data: some of the most-requested skills among those postings are code review, version control, and the software development life cycle. In non-internship postings for software engineers, those skills show up less frequently than in intern postings. “Code Review” is the eighth-most requested skill for interns, but it’s barely in the top 100 for non-interns.

Nursing shows a similar pattern: job postings for interns look for the skills of Patient Assistance, Patient Observation, and Activities of Daily Living (all in the top 10), while non-intern jobs request those same skills much less frequently.

If we think of internships as an introduction to a career, it would make sense that they would need to be more specific than other jobs. It’s likely that full-time, post-internship jobs assume competency at many of the same core fundamentals that a potential intern might not consider. If you’re ready for a full-time nursing job, recruiters are probably assuming you know you need to be able to assist patients, similar to a full-time software developer knowing how to participate in a code review.

In effect, this is a version of skills-based hiring, in which employers request the exact skills they need for a position, rather than requesting a degree that serves as a proxy for several. Because although many internships now require a BA, the majority (54.6%) still don’t. 

Where do you come from, where do you go? 

Software and nursing internship profiles are worth exploring because those industries are increasingly where we see internships focused. For healthcare especially, this may be correlated to the urgent need for workers throughout the industry—as demographic changes result in an aging US population, the care economy is rapidly adjusting and hospital systems are refining their talent strategies to keep up. 

Computer science, IT, healthcare, and engineering have all seen their share of internships increase, while professional fields like business, finance, and marketing have all seen a decline.

Underneath those big-picture trends about which sectors are hiring interns, we see some interesting patterns in which specific employers are posting those jobs. Here are some highlights:

• Amazon accounts for 15% of all IT postings.

• Walgreens makes up 13.5% of all healthcare roles (primarily in pharmacies).

• Oracle casts a wide net in hiring interns: it’s among the top employers for IT, marketing, and business management and operations.

• So does Disney: it’s in the top three for both marketing and PR and also human resources.

But regardless of industry, many workers actually don’t stay in the same role or industry that they interned in.

Computer Science and IT interns have the highest likelihood of remaining in the industry, but even that rate is below 50%. Perhaps more surprisingly, healthcare interns are even less likely to stay in the field. Instead, the next stops for healthcare interns, in order, are science and research, education and training, and business management and operations. 

The business management and operations industry is a popular choice among all interns, in fact: 18.2% of all interns who switch industry move to that one. Second place goes to education and training, which collects 14.2% of all interns who transfer. 

Profile data can also tell us more about specific trajectories workers take outside of the role they interned in: 

• Software Engineer Intern → Business / Management Analyst → Business / Management Analyst → Financial Services Sales Agent

•  UI / UX Designer / Developer Intern → Marketing Manager → Communications / Public Relations Specialist → Account Executive

• Software Developer Engineer Intern → Art / Music Professor

• Researcher / Research Associate Intern → Marketing Manager

• Event Planner Intern → Social / Human Services Specialist → Project Manager

• Legal Support Specialist Intern → Market Research Analyst → Researcher / Research Associate

The Takeaway

Internships have earned their reputation as an invaluable first step in the world of work, but it’s important to recognize that step often leads in unexpected directions. That’s a challenge if you’re relying on conventional wisdom that assumes every career goes in a straight line within the same industry, but skills data can help us see new possibilities throughout the labor market. Looking at career pathways others have taken can give workers the inspiration and insight to plot their next career move—as well as clarity on where they have skill gaps they can make up. 

Ultimately, internships serve as a crucial bridge between education and the workforce, offering both employers and employees the chance to explore, learn, and grow. By understanding the unique role internships play in the labor market, we can better navigate the complex landscape of modern careers and make more informed decisions about our professional futures.

Thanks for reading On The Job. Be sure to catch up on our past issues (including "The Inflation Equations" “What Happens When AI Job Postings Go Down?” and “The Future Of The Future Of Work”), and you can also subscribe here. We’ll see you next time.