Internships Are Crucial - and Dwindling
5 Tips on How to Handle a Shrinking Internship Market
Originally posted on LinkedIn. View LinkedIn post here.
The Wall Street Journal dropped a piece this week that every college student needs to read.
The headline finding: internships are more critical than ever - and harder to find than ever. This is important as internships are a key factor in post grad hiring.
Here are some sobering facts from the WSJ:
Internship postings on Handshake are down 16% from last year
The average internship now draws 109 applicants — up from 62 just one year ago
Some firms are replacing intern-level tasks entirely with AI
Let that last one sink in. One finance firm stopped recruiting from UCLA's on-campus investing club altogether because they no longer needed interns for the work interns used to do.
I want to take a moment and shout out two students mentioned in the piece who are doing it RIGHT:
Chloey Cho: 19 years old. Freshman at UCLA. Has already completed FOUR internships alongside her studies. When she found out one of her club's recruiting pipelines had been cut because of AI, she didn't spiral. She noticed, named it, and kept moving. That kind of self-awareness and resilience at 19 is rare. Watch this one.
Nathan Goldstein: Electrical engineering student at Union College. Couldn't find an internship, so he co-founded a group connecting students to real project work at nonprofits and small businesses. Expected 6 people at the first meeting. 30 showed up. More emailed after. He didn't wait for opportunity, he built it. That's the energy.
While these two students may be the exception, they're also the blueprint.
So, what do YOU do with this market? Here's what actually moves the needle:
1. Start embarrassingly early. Rice University's career center is telling freshmen during orientation week to start thinking about internships. If you're a sophomore or junior reading this you're not behind, but you need to move today.
2. Stop spray-and-praying applications. With 109 people applying to the same post, a cold application is nearly invisible. Warm outreach: a real connection, a referral, a thoughtful DM cuts through in a way a resume alone never will.
3. Create proof of work if you can't find a formal internship. Volunteer. Consult for a small business. Build something. Like Nathan did. Hiring managers want evidence you can do the job: give it to them even if no one handed you the opportunity.
4. Treat every internship like an audition. Companies are now converting 63% of interns to full-time hires: a five-year high. The internship IS the interview for your first real job. Get in the room and make it impossible to let you go.
5. Let this market light a fire, not put one out. 42.5% of recent grads are currently underemployed. That stat isn't here to scare you. It's here to separate the students who treat this market casually from the ones who don't.
Chloey and Nathan aren't waiting. Neither should you.
If you're navigating this market right now - as a student, a parent, or someone who works with students - I'd love to hear what you're seeing. Drop a comment below. I read every one and happy to help.