Becoming a sustainability professional: how can internships benefit your future career?

Finding the right green job and getting set in life after college graduation can be challenging. This is why internships exist: they can offer a great tool to transition from college or university life to a full-time career. Internships are common throughout the world, and they allow people starting a career or switching their line of work to get a taste of a field of work.

Being a transition between education and making a career in sustainability, how do internships benefit your future career, and why are they important?

Internships give you a taste of what the green career is about

Professional work life differs significantly from student life, and what you learn in school or college won’t always help you with your career. Internships allow these students to get a taste of what their line of work is all about and let them experience working in the field. Getting experience early is very important as it lets you know if the career you might be going towards in the future is the right one for you.

It’s always better to learn early if you might not be suited for a career in the sustainability or environmental field you are studying. Once you complete your degree or put more time and money into it, changing your line of work will be even harder for you.

Provide you with valuable work experience

Looking for a job in today’s green jobs market can be very difficult as most jobs will require you to have prior work experience. This creates a problem for many people as jobs will require work experience, but getting most jobs won’t be possible because of the lack of work experience. Internships allow businesses to offer you a job even when there isn’t a lot of prior work experience. Because internships are generally unpaid or very low pay, employers might be more willing to take a chance on you and take you on an internship position.

An internship can help you build your career in sustainability by either confirming a full-time position for you at the place where you intern or giving you valuable work experience useful for landing some other job.

Allow you to learn about the career and about yourself

Working at an internship will teach you a lot as you can learn from people who are working in the field you might someday end up working in. Hands-on experience with professionals can help in many different ways. A lot of what you learn at internships can apply to many aspects of your professional life and can get you prepared for the future.

Internships also help you learn a lot about yourself, what you are good at, and what green career might be good for you. Internships can be the first time in your life where you really get pushed out of your comfort zone, and that can force you to learn a lot about yourself. Knowing what you are good at and bad at will help you further develop your skills and improve upon what you might feel you are lacking.

Getting a job at a large multinational firm can be very hard due to the competition for those jobs. Internships can allow fresh graduates or people with lower experience to apply for internship positions at these firms. An internship can fast-track you towards a permanent position at a large firm.

The experience you gain from working at the best firms can be invaluable. Having experience from a large well-known firm also does wonders for your resume as landing another job can also become very easy.  Employers are always interested in seeing experience from recognized firms.

Build valuable connections

As someone who has minimal experience working and is now in the line of work they are going into, valuable connections can help a ton. The relationships you form during an internship can help you learn a lot, as your bosses in the internship can teach and mentor you a lot in regard to the career of your choice. On top of that, building connections in your line of work will also help you in landing good jobs in the future.

Learn social skills alongside technical skills

A big part of working in an office with other people is working as a team. Internships give you a taste of what working with other people might be like and helps you develop valuable social skills. Not only will internships help in teaching you how to deal with your colleagues and fellow workers, but they will also give you practical experience in dealing with your superiors.

Build your CV

There’s always a chance that the internship you are at can turn into a permanent job position.  Even though it isn’t uncommon for internships to turn into jobs, this doesn’t always happen and a lot of people just end up leaving and looking for some other employment once their internship ends. Despite this, an internship can still be very useful to you. Not only does it provide you with valuable workplace experience and an opportunity to learn, it also allows you to improve your CV and make prospects of future jobs better.

Even for people who do end up working at the place they were interning, there’s always a good chance that you might end up working somewhere else in the future. The experience you get from that job will be very useful on your CV.

Getting started with internships

Internships are generally easier to get into than full-time paid jobs. Still, with so many different people on the job market nowadays, employers want to see that you are interested in the opportunity available to you. It’s essential to have a good resume showcasing your skills and get good at giving interviews so you can impress your potential employers.

When looking for internships, the internet can help you out a lot as it can provide you with any information you need and help you find the best internships. There are many sites online that are designed to help college or school students in finding the right internships for them. Just searching internships Australia on google can guide you towards what you might be looking for.