In any regular year, landing a summer internship, first full-time role, or part-time gig can be tough. In 2020, tough was only an understatement—especially for those already disadvantaged by geographic location, a lack of professional networks, and general inaccessibility to new opportunities.
Just as students and recent graduates were challenged to find new ways to network and gain experience, the world of internships and recruiting was also met with a need to adapt. And at Parker Dewey, we’ve seen firsthand just how impactful remote Micro-Internships have become over this last year—even as recent graduates entered into the worst job market in over a decade.
Our 2020 destination survey was designed to help us understand how Micro-Internships prepare students and recent graduates for future opportunities, support skill-building, and build connections across different industries. The results illustrated that in a year of uncertainty, Micro-Internships continue to:
Read on for a full breakdown of the survey results.
Breaking down the demographics
We sent our 2020 destination survey to the Career Launchers who completed Micro-Internships through the Parker Dewey platform during the 2019-2020 academic year. Of our respondents,
How do Micro-Internships shape career outcomes?
Micro-Internships help students and recent graduates gain valuable experience, explore different industries and companies, and hone their core skills—perks that lead to better retention and stronger candidates for companies. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, 88% of respondents who graduated in 2020 are employed. This represents an almost 38% higher employment rate than all of 2020 college graduates as reported by NACE.
And while 88% is lower than the 96% we have seen in the past, we expect that this is the result of delayed hiring processes by some companies given the unusual recruiting cycle this year.
When asked about job fit and career outcomes,
Furthermore, with an increasing focus on core skills (e.g. communication, problem solving, adaptability, etc.) by employers—as evidenced by the updated NACE Career Readiness Competencies—recent graduates who have completed Micro-Internships are better prepared for their full-time roles.
The top skills that respondents cited as core to their job responsibilities:
And the top three core skills that respondents honed by participating in Micro-internships include:
The Micro-Internship experience
We asked our Micro-Intern alumni for additional feedback about their Micro-Internship experiences.
In the words of Micro-Interns
While the numbers themselves tell a story, here’s what respondents had to say about their Micro-Internship experiences.
On the benefits of a short-term, remote assignment:
“The 'micro' element is huge. Being able to drop in and get a real experience and then move on to something else was really meaningful to me. The pay was also much needed in the terrible job market in the wake of COVID-19.”
“I enjoyed that I was able to have a primarily remote internship that also had in-person meetings. It was great that I was able to really develop my personal and career skills in a short amount of time and make a meaningful impact.”
"I was happily surprised at truly how integrated I was as part of the team, just from these few short weeks of doing a project part-time. I was able to build genuine relationships with my managers and supervisors and we’ve even talked about continuing my involvement this year. That’s something I definitely didn’t expect from a short internship.”1
On skill development:
“It gave me a chance to take initiative and offer a company my skills while I was searching for a job. My Micro-Internship also helped boost my confidence during job interviews.”
“Completing my Micro-Internship made me realize that I made the right career choice! I learned a lot and gained a ton of experience to increase my knowledge for social media marketing. I also will be continuing to work for [company] this summer!”
On building authentic relationships:
“I really enjoyed the networking aspect of the Micro-Internship—I was able to make connections with the company that I completed the project for. I also liked how it was remote, and for the most part it was very independent.”
“It wasn’t until I got to actually work with those companies that I actually felt like I knew what I could expect. For me, the companies I felt more connected to were those that I was more involved with early on.”1
On how Micro-Internships create equitable pathways:
“I’m very interested in sales but I don’t have as much experience with that yet. Working on Micro-Internships meant there were less barriers: I could jump right into a project and I got to know what their expectations were sooner instead of being filtered out by my GPA.”
“Going through the interview process and hearing, 'Okay, you have an MBA, but you don’t have any experience,’ I had to figure out where I will get experience and in a quick way. When I looked at Parker Dewey, I saw there were a lot of different places I could go.”1
The main takeaway from our survey: Micro-Internships are small experiences with a big impact. They are a valuable experiential learning tool for students and recent graduates, leading to positive career outcomes. For organizations dedicated to increasing diversity within their talent pipeline, Micro-Internships provide a valuable experiential recruiting opportunity to assess a candidate’s skills.
1 Quotes pulled from a February post, "Student Voices: Using Micro-Internships for Recruiting."