Semi-Pro: The Benefits of Taking an Internship

Whether still choosing a career path or trying to get your foot in the door of your dream industry, an internship can prove to be a step in your professional progress

Thanks to the still persisting belief that interns are almost always relegated to do menial tasks like making coffee, distributing flyers, and running office errands, some students and professionals remain reluctant of entering an internship, with others mostly doing so as they are required to do it for school.

Despite the outdated perception of it, there are actually a number of benefits to doing an internship. Granted, most intern positions are underpaid or even unpaid, but what you gain from working as an intern can far outweighs any monetary amount.

Gain real-world experience

As much as your school instructors provide you with the knowledge to make you ready for your adult and professional lives, there is nothing quite like gaining first-hand experience. Via an internship, you get a taste of how it is being in a true-working atmosphere, while learning from professionals who have already had the chance to hone their craft.

If you’ve ever wondered how it would be like to work for high-profile companies like Ayala Land or ABS-CBN, or often thought of what it would be like to work for pioneering teams of emerging tech companies like Food Panda or Kalibrr, an internship will provide you the insight you need that can help you decide on what career path you could best follow.

Build your resume

Ask any human resources manager and recruiter, and they’ll tell you that they are much more likely to hire someone with work credentials rather than someone with a generic resume with little to no experience to show. Of course, an understandable contention is how can one gain the work experience needed to get hired, when they need to have to get hired first to gain that experience?

This is where an internship comes in, as it not only provides you the aforementioned real-world experience that you can put to paper, but also serves as the first of many other avenues which you can gain new skills that your future employers will be looking for, whether it’s in human resources, business development, or any other career.

Put what you know into practice

In line with gaining experience, an internship allows you to put the skills you have (and the others you gain later) into practice. While you may have earned exceptional grades from university, or earned multiple certifications in different training courses, an internship is an avenue for you to put what you know to the test, and discover what you are good at, while also understanding the things you need to improve.

On the other hand, future employers will also be glad to discover how the grades in your university records and the credentials shown on your licenses and/or certificates are not just letters and numbers on paper, but are skills that you have been able to apply in a real working environment.

Get a feel for different roles

During an internship you have the opportunity to try out new skills and tools without the pressure of being wrong. It is more or less a good time to experiment, and people who hire you for that internship know that. The absence of pressure allows you to focus on taking new ideas and skills for your next job, and incorporating them into your future job responsibilities.

Lasting a month or more at a time, internships also allow you to get a feel of different jobs and industries. More often than not, you’ll be tasked to do things that are beyond your internship description, where on your first week you can find yourself doing tasks related to events, but in the next could be asked to help out in operations.

Expand your professional network

Internships also provide you the opportunity to attend meetings and corporate events. Apart from learning how to behave and communicate in a professional environment, interacting with professionals in these settings also allow you to gain new connections which can serve as future references that can lead to future job opportunities.

These connections can go beyond being references, because as an intern, you’re likely among the youngest and most inexperienced in the company. This means almost everyone you work with or for has more experience, who can be something of a mentor to you as you begin determining and navigating your career path.

Kalibrr is a technology company that aims to transform how candidates find jobs and how companies hire talent. Placing the candidate experience at the center of everything it does, the company continues to attract the best talent from all over, with more than 2 million professionals and counting. Kalibrr ultimately connects these talents to companies in search of their next generation of leaders.

The only end-to-end recruitment solutions provider in Southeast Asia, Kalibrr is headquartered in Makati, Philippines, with offices in San Francisco, California and Jakarta, Indonesia. Established in 2012, it has served over 18,000 clients, and is backed by some of the world’s most powerful start-up incubators and venture capitalists. These include Y Combinator, Omidyar Network, Patamar Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Kickstart Ventures.

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