The Internship You Don’t Want

By Tommy Leung on 07/13/2010 in Life, Marketing

The economy is still in the toilet. We’ve been constantly told the recovery is right around the corner. We turn that corner and the recovery is no where to be seen. It’s bad for the recently graduated and for those of us who just cruised along during the boom–you now need a real skill to stay employed.

Some of us are of the  mindset that things will get back to normal once we hit that corner–back to being employed to do almost nothing and to do it only slightly better than the lowest common denominator. That is never coming back. That way is over.

People need to wake up. We aren’t. At least, not all of us are. I recently saw this on my Facebook feed:

This is the mindset that you just need to ride out the recession. Spend the minor effort now when nothing is going on anyway to put things that look good on your resume. This is an “easy job, looks good on resume”. Doesn’t say anything about what you would learn–if anything. An internship that nets you no new knowledge is about as good as doing nothing.

I’m not criticizing the person offering this position. I’m criticizing the attitude behind it. This attitude is too prevalent. There are a lot of people who believe that things will return to the way they were. But it won’t. The resume is dying.

In a time not too far from now, a resume will be useless. It is almost useless today. I see plenty of people who look good on paper but, can’t do any real work to save their lives.

You don’t need to build up your resume with activities that aren’t too different from wasting time. You need to build up your Google-ability. Do work that can be found. Do work that is meaningful. That you can point to and be proud to say that you were a part of it.

You don’t need an easy job that looks good on a resume.

By Tommy Leung