Get an internship now, at age 20, 30, or 40

Get an internship now, at age 20, 30, or 40 It used to be that internships were just for college kids. But today, the internship is for anyone who wants to do work they have no track record for doing. The internship is learning ground and proving ground for any age. Its true that kids  in college absolutely must get work experience to be employable after college, and an internship is a good way to do that, at any age. My favorite internship story is when my eight-year-old son got an internship as a stylist and found himself dressing a model. People in their 30s get internships to make up for lost time in their 20s. And also to land hipster jobs that are impossibly hard to getthis internship at Versace, for example, went for $3200. Thats right. Some internships are so cool that you have to pay for them. Goldman Sachs coined the term returnship for people in their 40s who do a job as a test, and not as a hire. Its a high-class word for temp-to-hire. And the Harvard Business review touts this as the on-ramp for a generation of parents who scales back  work periodically to accommodate their personal life. Even if you dont get the job offer at the end of the internship, you can put the job on your resume. And whether youre 20 or 40, you dont need to say it was an internship. Internship is really just a way for a company to talk about tax issues (Is the company paying employment tax on you? Can you claim unemployment if youre let go?). The best thing you can do in an internship is to negotiate for a real title, something else besides intern, so you can put it on your resume. People will assume you were not an intern and they will give you the benefit of doubt that you have solid experience. (Remember, when it comes to a job hunt, omission is not lying. You dont tell people when you wiped your butt in 2010, right? Theres lots of stuff you leave off your resume because you deem it irrelevant. Whether or not you were an intern is one of those things.) The best time to be hired as in intern is the fall. Interns just left their positions to go back to school. They are thinking they just finished their summer  internships  so they dont need another  internship.   This is the time when you should be pouncing. Its very competitive to get  internships  because the definition of an intern is theyre not qualified.   So the way to increase your odds as a nonqualified person is to compete when there are fewer nonqualified people competing.   That will be your big differentiator you showed up. The hardest part of getting an internship is getting a company to create an internship.  Its actually really difficult to manage someone who is not qualified because you have to oversee them so carefully, yet they can produce so little. Managers have to be careful not to spend more time managing the results than the results are worth.   During this cost benefit analysis,  lots of internships  are simply scrapped. The great thing about looking for an  internship  in the fall is that companies have already created an  internship,  and theres a spot in the company and they know what the intern can contribute, but the intern is recently gone. When youre selling yourself in the fall you can say Ill do exactly what your last intern did.   When youre selling yourself in the summer, you have to make up a whole new role. Students should cut classes to go to internships. The best time to get an  internship  is when youre supposed to be getting good grades because  your grades dont matter.   Its a complete waste of your time.   Theres no way to translate that you got straight As in college. If you’re from a good college, people already assume youre smart.   So if youre at Harvard,  you can just get Cs your network will get you a good job regardless.   If you are from a mediocre college, no one cares if you got good grades.   Youre at a bad college.   They assume its easy to get good grades at a mediocre college.   So, all in all, grades dont matter unless you go to  graduate school, and thats a ticket to hell. So the time youre supposed to be in class is a great time to do an internship  because getting a C requires very little effort on your part you have a lot of extra time. Anyway, going to classes and learning about history is total BS.   If youre so interested in history,  you can do it after work for the rest of your life.   Right now, what you need to be doing is focusing on making sure that your on-ramp to adult life isnt destroyed by  anachronistic educational goals, like being well-rounded. What to do next?   Dont worry about your resume. Interns, by definition, do not have killer resumes. Write a cover letter saying youd like an internship in the company, explain what interests you about the company, and ask if they have any internships available. This letter is a long shot, but not in the fall, because all the internships are sitting open this month, and so few people think to apply.