If you’ve been paying attention to local news media, you might’ve noticed the buzz about Singapore’s “tertiary internship rat race.” 

The importance of internships in today’s job market may be something new for parents, as internships were not all that significant when some of us were growing up. For instance, those graduating from polytechnics over two decades ago would’ve only done one internship arranged by the school as a compulsory requirement. At the time, one also tended to associate quality internships with a small percentage of highly driven students, or those who could tap into their parents’ networks for interesting opportunities.

Today, we’re hearing about university students doing up to 10 internships before they graduate. To cite another example, at the Singapore Management University, the official estimate is that tech students complete two to six internships during their degree programme.

If you didn’t have a fulfilling internship experience in your youth, it might be difficult to see the benefits, and perhaps even harder still to support your teen in this area. One suggestion for parents is that you can chat with your peers going through mid-career traineeships, because they are quite common now, and bear some similarity to student internships. Based on your peers’ feedback, you can get a better sense of what today’s internships offer, and how to differentiate between a ‘good’ versus ‘poor’ experience. 

Below, we’ll share some tips as well, based on what we’ve learned from our conversations with others.

Defining Internship Goals

From recent media coverage about local internships, we can gather that today’s teens take on internships for these reasons:

• Career exploration: Taking on multiple internships provides the opportunity to try different roles and industries to determine career preferences. This is particularly useful if one is undecided about a career path, or plans to do something unrelated to one’s major.
• Resume building and competitive advantage: Internships allow youths to create a strong portfolio that stands out from the crowd, in order to impress potential employers.
• Practical experience and skill development: Gaining hands-on experience often helps one to better understand classroom learning, or even see the gaps between theory and practice. Interns can also seek advice from experienced professionals.
• Networking opportunities: Internships are a chance to network, which is crucial for future job opportunities. Many interns hope to secure a full-time offer from their placement firm.
• Financial gain: For some interns, earning pocket money to support themselves during their studies is a perk. In fact, in certain industries like finance, interns can make five-figure salaries.
• Peer influence: It’s hard to be complacent or relaxed, if one is around peers who are pursuing multiple internships. The challenge is to focus on what’s right for oneself.
• Early career start: These days, internships can be so competitive that one has to go through multiple selection rounds and ace technical tests as well as behavioural interviews to secure the offer. It’s not surprising that rejections are also commonplace. Going through all of this helps one to mentally prepare for a real-world job hunt.
• Global opportunities: Some local interns seek global placements, in order to gain international exposure and experience.

The above is a good place for starting discussions with your teen. If your teen is a go-getter, they may already have researched internships in their own way, and you can focus on listening to their needs. It’s usually the teens that are more laidback who will pose more of a challenge for parents — if this is the case, you’ll want to focus on asking questions to help them uncover their goals, rather than doing their homework for them.

Searching for an Internship

If your teen is very interested in their current major or has a distinct passion, it will be much easier to search for relevant internships. If they’re not, the tips below will still apply, just that they will have to be specific about what they might like to try.

The best place to start looking for internships is your teen’s current school. Tertiary institutions now offer a lot more support for internships than they did in the past. However, if your teen finds that the school’s employer network is lacking, you could help them by going through your own professional network, to see if someone can be of assistance. 

The reality is that there are many opportunities that are not posted on a public jobs board, which could range from a smaller law firm where partners are willing to let friends’ children do job shadowing for a few months, or an MNC that is open to taking a more experimental approach to their internships, where they will consider applicants that have different qualifications and skills from what they typically accept. It’s hard to find out about such opportunities unless you have help from an insider.

If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, or you’ve dropped out of the workforce for caregiving reasons, you can still tap into the networks that you belong to, such as your school-based parenting groups, interest groups, or religious groups. Make it known that your teen is looking for an internship, and see if anyone offers to assist.

Of course, the other thing to be prepared for is your teen’s willingness to commit to an internship. Some teens are wary of full-time commitments during their vacation — e.g. 9AM to 6PM, Mondays to Fridays, with the possibility of weekend work — while others are willing to make personal sacrifices for potential long-term gains. 

As a parent, your job is only to help open some doors for your teen. You can’t walk them through the entire process, and forcing teens into commitments that they’re not ready for can backfire. So focus on making initial introductions and helping your teen to prepare for interviews. The rest is really up to them.

Securing an Internship

There are so many resources that a teen can tap into these days, from LinkedIn to social media and AI. Again, your teen needs to display initiative and agency in this process. For instance, they can let you know that they need a domain name and web host to create a portfolio site, and you can help with the purchase. But don’t offer to design the site for them, and only give feedback about their portfolio if asked. 

Similarly, you can recommend that they set up their LinkedIn account, but don’t give feedback on their profile details unless they’re asking for comments. You can help by taking them to a professional studio for their profile shots, or showing them your own account as an example. 

As for where internships are listed — LinkedIn or InternSG are some places to start browsing. If your teen is eying big names like Google, do be aware that many coveted internships are seasonal. Your teen should be consulting relevant documentation on their own, and taking note of important dates using tools like Excel or Notion.

As for preparation, AI tools like ChatGPT can serve as a personal career coach, which means that parents can remain hands-off. If you’re a ChatGPT subscriber, you can upload a resume as well as paste a job description into the chat window, in order to get tips on fine tuning a resume for that specific role. ChatGPT can also generate a list of interview questions and sample answers for the role. For tech in particular, the selection process might include a short chat with a recruiter, followed by a technical assessment, and interviews with the hiring team as well as HR. With a Google search, your teen should be able to find selection tips pertaining to their companies of interest. This could be on Medium blogs, or on forums like Reddit. 

Making the Most of an Internship

If your teen has successfully secured an internship, congratulations, as that’s a big hurdle crossed!

After the euphoria settles and your teen begins on the internship, their experience will really depend on how structured the programme is. Many internships can be unstructured, where one is given ad hoc tasks that will presumably allow them to learn more about the role or the company. One tip that you can give to your teen is to build their friendships. Try not to approach the internship in a solitary manner; instead, go for lunch with other interns, find out what they are doing, observe what they might be doing better, and ask them for advice. If there are friendly senior staff in the office (and these days, ‘senior’ might mean someone who’s worked there for a year), approach them to see if they are willing to do quick chats to give tips. 

Often, interns in larger firms might be asked to read documentation as a start. This can feel unwieldy and unfocused, because there are thousands of linked pages available for reading. If your teen asks for help on this, you can tell them how you might approach such a task, such as by using a note-taking app to jot down learnings, or making sure that one reads with a purpose in mind, such as to spot differences between X and Y. 

Beyond all of this, it’s crucial that your teen feels comfortable checking in regularly with their direct supervisor. It can be difficult to balance between wanting to show initiative to complete a task, versus seeking clarification to ensure that time isn’t wasted on doing a task wrongly. Your teen will have to figure this out in their own way, but as a rule, they should be checking in with their supervisor at least once or twice a day, so that the supervisor is aware of what they’re working on, how they’re progressing, and what their challenges are.

Want to talk to other parents about student internships? Join the conversation on the KiasuParents forum!