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I interviewed (waaay back when) to become an electricians apprentice. The first question asked was who had a license in my family. I figured all questions after that were meaningless. I didn't get in.
In high school I had a job I went to right after school that was tied to my core class. $1.25 an hour.
Back in school, I was rejected to every single place I applied to for an internship. And let me tell you, I applied to every single position that was opened that I could find. And I always applied early. Most of the time, I never heard anything back.
Years later, I was now a middle manager at an engineering firm. My company hired some interns and sent 2 to my office. I treated them well. Well, I eventually found out that neither of them was an engineering major. One was a fitness major and the other a history major (hoping to become a history teacher). What the hell were they doing in my office?
I made a few phone calls and found out they were sons of contractors.
So, that's why I never got an internship back in school...
Not always.
I'm an engineer and we usually take in 2-3 interns each summer. They submit resumes and interview just like a real job. Out of the 30 or so interns we've taken in, only one was a "son of...". Even he was an engineering major though, and to be quite honest, one of our best interns.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,206,701 times
Reputation: 57821
Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroWord
Might as well blow off some steam here.
Back in school, I was rejected to every single place I applied to for an internship. And let me tell you, I applied to every single position that was opened that I could find. And I always applied early. Most of the time, I never heard anything back.
Years later, I was now a middle manager at an engineering firm. My company hired some interns and sent 2 to my office. I treated them well. Well, I eventually found out that neither of them was an engineering major. One was a fitness major and the other a history major (hoping to become a history teacher). What the hell were they doing in my office?
I made a few phone calls and found out they were sons of contractors.
So, that's why I never got an internship back in school...
They don't let you interview and hire your own interns? I suppose that may happen still at some places, but here we treat the hiring of interns like any other opening, as the hiring manager I would never take someone even as an intern that I had not interviewed and selected.
They don't let you interview and hire your own interns? I suppose that may happen still at some places, but here we treat the hiring of interns like any other opening, as the hiring manager I would never take someone even as an intern that I had not interviewed and selected.
You're a hiring manager. I'm a lowly middle manager.
I keep telling people. Us middle managers have less power than people think. We work long hours, even during weekends, so that the projects could run smoothly the following week. We put in the most hours and we work mostly behind the scenes so everybody keeps thinking we twiddle our thumbs all day long everyday. And if anything goes wrong, like being hit with an NCR by the auditors, it's us that got all the blame.
A few weeks ago, one of the guys actually came to me and asked who checked and made all corrections to the calculations before they were submitted for the work on Monday? After all, everyone turned in their work on Friday and left. Then on Monday, people came in in the morning and somehow everybody's work had magically been checked, corrected, processed, and approved over the weekend. Well, gee, I wonder who actually came in on Saturday and did all that work?
I've had bad experience with the people who never work in school because they have to focus on "activities" and "extracurriculars". In my opinion, one of the very worst trends among parents lately is the whole "don't work during school" thing.
The experience that is gained by having to work a crappy job when you are young far outweighs the value of most extracurricular activities in the long-run.
I filled my summers with a few odd jobs. I started off volunteering for an annual music festival in NYC, going around to clubs like CBGB's and Irving Plaza, setting up and troubleshooting PCs (with dial-up) during the day, then tracking attendance at the shows at night. I spent another summer working at an ISP doing some light coding, customer service and the occasional DSL service visit. By senior year I was going overseas to do research (ended up being mostly programming) and then participating in a product development co-op with an electronics company.
I got really lucky and landed an internship at Time, Inc. as a Junior Designer. To this day, it was one of the coolest jobs I ever had.
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