Remote Internships - What are the Benefits and Drawbacks, and what to expect!
Complete guide for those contemplating a remote internship
All of the above images are from adobe stock-royalty free
Pros and Cons of Working Remotely:
From a business standpoint there are pros and cons as well for having remote interns.
Pros:
Wider pool of applicants from across the globe, more availability for employees
Cost efficiency from an employer standpoint
Gain experience while still being in college full time
Earn money while working from home, as well as gaining valuable experience for future job
Cons:
Miscommunication possibilities with coworkers and clients
No in-person experience
Not desirable for some industries such as medical field, manufacturing
Lack of management overview with assisting with work
Lack of attention from management
Source for image: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/02/student-impressions-virtual-internships-remote-first-jobs
Is a Remote Internship the right fit for you?
Remote internships are not a right fit for every type of personality type, as there are times in remote internships where there is a disconnect between co-workers and long periods of time without discussing with other people. In addition, you may not be able to focus as well as you could inside an office, and may get off task often.
However, if you are someone who is able to stay on track and enjoy learning how to do tasks without much interference from a boss, then you might find benefit from your own schedule to get tasks done. Other common traits that might make you a good fit for a remote internship and the values you can learn can be found below, as well as some statistics involving how interested people are with college internships.
Source for image: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/02/student-impressions-virtual-internships-remote-first-jobs
Do Remote Internships create the same value?
Do remote internships create the same value as in-person internships?
There are many factors that go into answering this question and it truly depends on what you see as the most valuable. Take the pros and cons mentioned above and make a list based on what you perceive as the most valuable factors for yourself.
To aid you in creating this list of valuable factors for yourself, we have compiled from several sources as well as the pros and cons that were detailed above, the values that remote internships can bring.
Values:
The ability to work wherever you have reliable internet
Freedom for self-time management
Greater flexibility
Less expensive to not have to go to internship
More time as well by staying at home
Gain essential experience about online technologies and processes
Some of the values lost by being virtual are:
Harder to make connections online with coworkers
All of the time on the clock is spent behind a screen
The importance of company culture
These values are only fully achievable through utilizing the skills that are described in the next section.
Source for image: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/02/student-impressions-virtual-internships-remote-first-jobs
What skills are needed?
Skills needed to be successful during your virtual internship.
Now that you have heard the pros and the cons of virtual internships, you are probably thinking what skills are needed to be successful during this virtual internship. There are 4 skill that are essential to performing well during your virtual internship. These skills are needed no matter what kind of virtual internship it is whether it be business, biology, or education related virtual internship.
Motivation
The first skill is motivation. This skill is the most important as its apart of the rest of the skills as well. It’s a straightforward skill, you must be motivated to do your work, especially when working virtually. It’s a lot easier to get in the working mind set when you are working in a building with other people who are doing work. Working virtually, you are working from your home, which you normally see as a place to relax.
Reliability
The second skill is reliability. You have to be able to meet deadlines when you do not have your boss sitting 10 feet away from you. It is vital that you are reliable in that fact that you get your work done on time. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, oh my boss isn’t checking to make sure I am getting my work done on time because I do not work with them in person. Because I guarantee they are, and they fully expect you to meet those deadlines.
Self-control
The third skill is self-control. This is another important skill. “I can work and watch tv at the same time and my boss will never find out”. Or “Wow, this is a boring meeting, I am going to browse on my phone while I semi listen to this meeting, no one will know”. You can not fall into these traps if you want to be successful during your virtual internship. You need to be able to control yourself when it comes to fighting distractions. All it takes is one important statement made by your boss in the meeting that you did not hear because you were distracted and boom, you did not do what was asked and your boss in not happy. If you were working in person, you wouldn’t have this struggle because your boss could walk by and check on you at any moment and meetings would be in person.
Organization
The final skill is Organization. You need to setup a place where you will be working from. And you need to keep your work-related materials there. When working from home, its easy to misplace work papers with everyday things like newspapers or mail. We suggest that you keep all of your work-related materials in your work area. And keep all non-work-related things away from your work area so you do not lose important work material.
“day in the life” of remote internship
Now that you’re starting your own remote or virtual internship, it’s important to understand what type of duties you will be carrying out during your time with whatever company you have decided upon. Your responsibilities may vary from those of face-to-face options, or you could find yourself completing even more rigorous work than you thought possible. Knowing how to face these challenges and having a general idea of what to expect can help you exceed your own expectations! We’ve put together a list of some topics and how they may differ and what to expect during your own time at a virtual internship.
Travel
Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room, travel. A remote internship is the easiest way to get to and from work because you don’t have to leave your own home. This makes the concept extremely flexible to fit into your daily life. No longer having to drive through traffic to an office building, packing lunches, or in some cases even having to put on pants because on video calls they only see the upper half. This can also mean that you have the option to engage in internships around the country because the glory of virtual is not having to move. You can live in Illinois and complete a remote internship in California and have the same duties and connect with the same people from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Hours
The next concept to touch on is work hours. Since you are not travelling to an office it’s a lot harder to demand that usual 9-5 or other kinds of set hours you usually find in a company. Being at home, it’s a lot harder to set or follow those rigorous hours guidelines. This does not mean that you cannot work overtime or be stuck grinding away for hours at night just to finish a report before a deadline. The plus here is that some of the only times you have set hours are for meetings. You may take a 2+ hour meeting in the morning and have the rest of the day to finish any work or meet with colleagues virtually or take time to yourself in person before finally getting back to the tasks at hand. These flexible hours can make it a lot easier for some to finish work and possibly make it harder for others to accomplish the same. Being that some days you may find yourself finishing work early you can essentially “leave early” and disassociate yourself from work the rest of the day. This can also free up your schedule enough to have a separate part time job or even a second remote internship. Nobody is stopping you from exploring multiple options at the same time and if both jobs can allow you that time there is no reason not to.
Responsibilities
The one thing that remains mostly constant throughout virtual or personal internship options is your responsibilities as an intern. No, you won’t be having to run and grab coffee for your bosses, delivering papers or running mindless errands for somebody that has little to do with your job itself. Instead, you may find yourself conquering slightly different errands such as meeting with different team members to check on things or learn new tasks. All the usual tasks are expected, and you will be set to certain schedules and deadlines and are expected to maintain those through the internship. You may find yourself having one day full of Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings, and another day where you have assignments to do. It all depends on the company and what type of work you are dealing with on what kind of activities you may find yourself in every day. However, the one thing that again remains constant is the work. Some have even found that the remote options are more challenging and pose more forms of work than the in-person variants.
Communication
The biggest difference between virtual and face-to-face must be workplace communication. It is physically impossible for you to run over to your manager or department head’s offices and ask for help or simply chat for a couple minutes before your day starts. No office cubicles with a bunch of crammed together coworkers breathing all around you. No typing noises, pens clicking, sneezes, or the usual stereotypical office behavior because you’re just not at one during this venture. The largest consensus after completing a virtual internship is the notion of not feeling connected with that company or with your coworkers during your stay there. It’s so hard to go out for drinks after work or have real conversations with those people when you’re meeting through a screen or an email. The other thing about communication is how it’s being done. Texting, emailing and other work messaging apps such as Teams or Slack have become much more prevalent during these post COVID times in the workforce. You may find yourself bombarded with long emails or short, to the point, variants as soon as you wake up in the morning and you are replying to them the whole day as well. Email is also a great way to give yourself reminders and be able to look up past emails to sort of keep yourself on task or have that feedback next to you while doing your job.
Screen Time & Distractions
Now we are forced with the most literal of the topics of screen time. Virtual internships mean screens. Your whole job is online which means the screen in front of you is your best friend and the one coworker you get to see every day. These screens allow you to look at all your work and different messages from your coworkers, to watch videos or presentations, and even to make videos or presentations for your colleagues. Too much screen time can be bad for your eyes so it's important to think about that when exploring these opportunities. Investing in some blue light glasses or simply taking small breaks to help your eyes can do wonders in the long run. The other screens we are dealing with here involve all the other ones in your home and the one you always keep on you. Televisions are less of a distraction unless you find your desk setup or office near to one. The biggest threat of distraction to you is your phone. Everybody has a smartphone nowadays and it can be your biggest downfall in remote internships. The draw of answering a quick text could pull you into the TikTok train and suddenly a half hour or longer has gone by without you noticing. We also have our furry companions at home which can distract us as well. Your top priority is work and having those distractions around you can be helpful in making your decision.
Daily life may vary based on the company you find yourself at or the job you are venturing into. But we hope that the things above can help you during your search and when weighing your separate options together. You may find yourself travelling a whole lot less, working some slightly interesting hours, but still completing the same if not even more work than usual. Your communication may be lacking but with work it can always improve, and finally, you must be mindful of all those at-home distractions.
Now that you have learned some valuable insight into a remote internship, we have compiled a list of some of the most popular and useful websites that would be able to help you find internship opportunities that would be useful for you.
Handshake – Handshake is a popular online networking website that is most commonly used by higher education such as colleges and universities to help students connect with employers in a seamless fashion and allows for open communication with jobs that could be of interest to you. The best feature of handshake is that the system allows for an algorithim to detect what internships may be of interest to you based on what you have liked or interacted with in the past, as well as promoting your resume to employers in that field.
Indeed is a very popular website that is used by a large majority of companies that has every type of job listing that you could think of, from mom and pop companies looking for job searchers, to Fortune 500 companies looking for people to hire, there is no end to the amount of possibilities found on indeed.com
LinkedIn is one of the most widely known recruiting platforms for any type of business, and most employers will have their company listings displayed on their home page with the availability of openings, as well as search options that allow you to find jobs that are remote only, allowing for quick and easy searches for jobs that matter the most to you, and within your criteria.
