Many job applicants want a job but often do not have the prerequisite experience, experience that they can only have by getting a job. Managers who take the chance and hire them may have to spend considerable time and effort training them, only to find the new recruits unsuitable or unhappy with the jobs and looking for employment elsewhere. One way around this problem for many organizations is an internship program. For professionals in career transition as well as students and recent graduates, such programs provide working experience that otherwise would never be supplied to someone interested in a specific field.

The value of offering student internships, the most common form of internships is broad and varied. From the students viewpoint an internship offers the opportunity to explore career fields before committing to a major or graduate program and to strengthen skills and abilities. For those students who have a clear view of their future path, an internship provides the vehicle for increasing their possibilities of employment in their chosen field by building professional confidence, making contacts in their eventual field of endeavor, and bridging the resume gap between objectives and realities.

Fortunately for aspiring students, an internship program has real value for the many organizations and educational institutions that carry on internships on a regular basis. Interns contribute their energy, enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity to situations that are often in need of a fresh perspective. Many interns, through hobbies, talents and non-formal training, have bona fide knowledge and technical expertise in an area that they are more than eager to apply in the real world. They are ideally suited to take on special projects that a full time-staffer cannot be spared for, or to implement short-term projects for which it would not be cost-effective to permanently staff.