Being a senior comes with plenty of perks—senior skip days, prom, senior assassin—but one of the best is finishing school early and being able to work in an environment of your choice. Whether you’re working at a consulting firm, Velocity Sports or Village Bagels, senior internships are a unique way to explore potential career paths or just have fun.
“It’s really pretty open in terms of approval,” Co-Staples Internship Coordinator Lauren Goldshore said. “They have to be able to assign a supervisor to our intern, so they have somebody they’re accountable to, that they’re learning from. However, students can also go out of state. We have students that leave the country, but the AP has to approve it.”
When it comes to matching students with internships, participants are required to answer two key questions for each option they select: Why are you interested in this internship? Do you have any special skills that you feel would make you successful in this internship?
“Once you guys complete those questions, a lot of sites will use those questions to make their decision,” Goldshore said. “But now there’s a lot more interviews that are happening, and we’re encouraging that.”
While the program has been a long-standing success, they still face some challenges. Most sites are excited about participating and giving back to Staples and the broader community. However, obstacles occasionally come up for both students and program coordinators.
“Something that we run into every year, and we’re constantly reminding the students, is to be an active participant in this process,” Goldshore said. “[Co-Senior Internship Coordinator] Mrs. Larit and I are not working for you, we’re partnering with you, to help you find an internship and have some success.”
Another common issue is the trend of students fixating on one internship and refusing to consider other options. When choosing the five internships, it’s important to have an open mind, and remember it doesn’t have to be something you will do in college.
“It’s a three week program,” Goldshore said. “Pick something that you are really interested in, and think outside of the box. Spend time in an environment for three weeks that you’re not going to be learning about for the next four to six.”
Each year, some students feel disappointed when their tasks don’t match the provided job descriptions. To address this, the coordinators revisit sites annually, encouraging them to and refine their descriptions for clarity and robustness. At the same time, students must be flexible. In the professional world, job descriptions are just a starting point into the job and people often find themselves doing much more.
“When you apply for a job, you’re not doing only what’s listed on the description,” Goldshore said. “Remember that in the real world, you’re going to be doing a lot of things that you aren’t best at. And the purpose of the program is to give you a real world experience.”
In addition to helping students improve their communication skills, the internship programs provides seniors with an experience of what it’s like to work in different industries and teaches them to be accountable to people other than their teachers, parents and coaches.
“Every week seniors have to do a weekly reflection,” Goldshore said. “One of the questions we ask is: Can you tell us any skills that you feel like you’ve learned while you’re on your internship that you can now bring in, whether it’s your college experience or part time job? Kids come out really surprised about what they took away from their internship.”
In the future, the coordinators would like to focus on helping teach students business etiquette and creating Linkedin profiles.
“When I first started work out of college, I did campus recruiting and I loved being in that environment,” Goldshore said. “For me, coming back to high school has been as close as I can get to that feeling of working with the students on a campus level.”
