Should i intern at a startup

If you ever have the opportunity to work for a brand-name company, take it. Adding that name to your resume will be extremely helpful down the road. An internship at McKinsey stands out. Any student with entrepreneurial interest should seriously consider working at a startup for a summer during college. If you have a number of potential options for internships, then think of it this way — optimize for brand first, then experience.

In general there are two categories or internships: technical and non-technical. The interviewers may have brain teasers, mathematical problems, or puzzles for you to solve. You should be able to communicate your abilities quickly and efficiently during the interview. In non-technical roles, there will be more emphasis placed on communication and leadership.

Doing working outside the classroom shows initiative and a real desire to work in the industry. Your goal is to show them that you regularly build and launch software.

For consulting, you can do case competitions or perform market research for a company on your own. Even search on freelance platforms for companies that need a hand with research projects. Remember, there are many different paths to reaching one of the big, marquee companies.

This is great because you can get a real idea of what you are naturally good at and passionate about when applying for your first role. Rather than working in an office with hundreds of cubicles while wearing full business attire, start-ups tend to be a little open. This is often not the case for a corporate office, where there tend to be more individual desks and cubicles with less room for an open environment. We do note that neither type of work culture is wrong per se, but rather it will come down to your preference.

Choose an environment in which you will be comfortable being a part. The social experience between a start-up and a corporation is often different from one another as well. Though this is not necessarily bad, it does limit you from interacting and networking with people already working in a position you hope to one day have yourself. In a start-up environment, there are usually fewer interns, which means your daily interactions will be with full-time employees.

The benefit to this is that you will get more insight and advice from those who are currently working in your field, and you will also be creating a valuable network that you may one day be able to call upon. You may find their experience and your work relationship with them to be a valuable tool in the future. For corporations, you will see that there is usually a fixed internship period, application window, and a rigid interview process, often with multiple rounds.

This often eliminates many people from the process. However, in a start-up, you will find that there tends to be more flexible and most of them will hire regularly throughout the year rather than during a certain timeframe.

The interview process itself is often less rigorous, both in the number of rounds and also in the type of candidate they are looking to hire. Rather than looking at academic history, start-ups will focus more on your ability to execute various tasks efficiently. As you can gather from this guide, there is more than one option when it comes to working as an intern. The biggest differences between a start-up and a corporation are their working environment and the type of work you can do.

So, ultimately deciding on which one to choose is down to which one better fits your personality and career goals. However, if your career goals are to really get stuck in with a company, help a business grow from the bottom up, or even start your own business, working as an intern in a start-up will give you all the experience you will need.

Have you started applying for internships? It would be really interesting to hear about your experiences, and which type of corporations you have been applying with. Leave your feedback below. Related Articles. Start-up vs. The legal landscape controlling the treatment of interns has been rapidly evolving and for-profit companies offering internships have come under increased scrutiny.

So, what precautions should a startup take when hemming and hawing over the prospect of having an intern? First, lets differentiate between an intern and an employee. Internships exist as means for a person to gain practical skills or education in a certain field. An employee, on the other hand, is hired to serve the interests of their employer.

Employment has no inherent educational value. This piece of federal legislation sets guidelines for minimum wage, employee benefits, workplace discrimination, and unemployment insurance.

State laws must meet or exceed the standards in the federal framework. Under the legal system, big problems arise when a company starts to muddle the waters by treating an unpaid intern like an employee.

With that difference now sorted out, lets look at unpaid vs. A for-profit company may bring on unpaid interns only if certain criteria are met. The criteria are the same whether the unpaid internship is undertaken for credit as part of a formal education or for individuals looking to explore potential careers. In other words, the company bringing on an intern must provide the education or instruction so that the intern develops skills and not so the company receives free labor.

Specifically, U. Courts and the Department of Labor look at six criteria to determine if a company is treating an unpaid intern as an employee in violation of FLSA.