by Jamie Farrell

What is the one thing that ALL career advisors agree on?

Internships.

They agree that internships are the best way to:

• Gain real world knowledge not being taught in classrooms
• Greatly increase their sphere of influence through networking
• Most important, make the entry-level candidate far more employable

In fact, a recent study by Gardner, Chow and Hurst for Michigan State states that 90% of direct-from-college hires will go to those with internship experience on their resume.

Let’s look at a couple real life examples: James “Scrappy” Stassen – currently the stage manager for Justin Bieber, managing all audio engineering and stage moves – major job for the biggest star in the world right now. Prior to that, he managed T-Payne’s multi-billion dollar tour. How did he get there?

Internships. Working with the right people, networking – yes – for free, with the right people, and being passionate enough about his love of music to go against the grain.

He could have gone to Harvard with his perfect SAT score; yet he chose to go to a school that focused solely on audio/music engineering. He tapped into the internship program, and now he is the most famous audio engineer and stage manager in the business. And he achieved this by age 29…starting through internships. (He’s also been my best friend for 20 years so I’m extremely proud of him!)

When I hit 23, I followed his lead. I loved marketing and loved innovation. I only wanted to do things that had never been done before. I knew that working for a start-up company was the KEY to learning and moving up quickly. I kept my full time job and also accepted an internship at a start-up called Education Connection.

I worked for free in the beginning, and the education I received from that internship was worth two Ivy League college degrees. By 25, I was making six figures; all thanks to internships.

As I’ve been speaking with career experts, I’ve been studying and looking for one common denominator that leads to success. All data points to two things: start-up experience and internships.

I just happened to be lucky. I didn’t know this at the time, but it was the path I chose. Now it’s time to impart this information to others and guide them in finding their passion, and finding it quickly.

So I set about some research and due diligence. I did some Internet research and found that most of the internship sites were frustrating to me.

I could see the positions offered for interns, especially at the Fortune 500s were all the types of jobs that “sound good,” but I knew they would be the type where these interns were doing nothing but copying papers and other busy work. It may look decent on a resume if you get a great company, but minimal learning takes place.

Then I came upon a site called YouTern. I was amazed. It was a site targeting internships for start-up, entrepreneurial companies. The internships offered were awesome. There were no copying papers; these interns were thrown directly into the proverbial fire. I love it.

Being a “connector”, I reached out to owner Mark Babbitt. I asked how his team came upon this idea. He explained: For our company, and for our partners and customers, we went to the Internet to find entrepreneurial-minded, passionate intern candidates. As lifetime entrepreneurs and mentors ourselves, we didn’t want the ‘I’m just riding out the summer’ type of interns; we wanted those who were ready to contribute now – to really step up. Those who would dive head first into the shallow end of the pool, knowing they would go on to amazing careers. When there was no resource available that even came close, we often found ourselves swearing at the browser. Then we said, ‘Wait… there is NO resource available!’ And we set out to build YouTern – a true first-to-market opportunity – when we didn’t think there were any of those left.” As this blog talks about personal and professional growth, it would be a disservice to not introduce you to this service (and it’s free!). For Gen Y, this is your site; you’ll feel at home and the internships are for companies like United by Blue, GenJuice and even Marvel Entertainment (want to intern for Wolverine?), plus hundreds of other start-ups in Silicon Valley, Orange County, Austin and New York.

I also saw that YouTern also posts internships at change-oriented non-profits – perfect for the Millennial mindset of social responsibility.

For those of you who are a bit older, two things:
1) You probably have children – this is made for them. Introduce them to it. No need to “push it”… they will engage in the community themselves. The site is so engaging that the average site stay is over 20 minutes; phenomenal user experience.
2) You may even want to look at it for yourself; for your company to acquire interns of the Gen Y intelligence, ambition and innovation sector.

As Mr. Babbitt said to me, “Entrepreneurial internships are proverbial “win-win”. The intern gains incredible hands-on experience – and perhaps a life-long mentor – at a dynamic start-up. At the same time, the company extends bandwidth through highly-qualified, technically-savvy contributors.”