Provided for Illinois State University Finance students by
Ronald J. Hill, CPA
Finance Director, Town of Normal
The following information is provided by Ron Hill, who has served since 1979 as Finance Director for the Town of Normal. Ron is a Gibson City, Illinois native, a US Air Force veteran, and a 1972 graduate of Southern Illinois University who later studied accounting at Illinois State. He is also a past president of the Illinois Government Finance Officers Association. Before getting his start in government financial administration with the City of Bloomington he worked in management for grocery wholesaler J.M. Jones, and thus has experience with financial management issues in a range of private and public sector applications, and he has shared his expertise several times speaking at ISU Financial Management Association meetings. The Town of Normal internship is known among ISU finance students as a top quality learning experience that gives them hands-on exposure to topics that include budgeting, pension fund management, municipal bond financing, and Ron has sponsored far more of our interns than any other professional supervisor in the history of our program.
For additional information on internship opportunities for Illinois State Finance students including the process for applying for internships, visit Dr. Edgar Norton's internship Web site.
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An internship is a formal educational experience that takes place in a professional workplace setting. Work activity will not necessarily qualify as a finance internship simply because you might learn some things and it takes place in a financial environment. For example, answering phones at a bank would teach you some basics about the financial world, and the experience would look good on your resume, but the ISU Finance program would not approve the experience for internship course credit. A true internship meaningfully exposes you to higher-level “real world” applications of financial theory and practice that you have covered in the classroom. It is best to plan an internship, therefore, only for a time period that begins after you have completed several finance courses.
Ideas on Finding Internships
A few local companies and agencies, such as the Town of Normal Finance Department, work with the ISU Finance program on a regular basis, and you should talk with the ISU Finance internship coordinator about the availability of these internship positions. However, the limited number of local organizations that can consistently provide suitable internships, and many students' understandable desires to find internships in their home areas over the summer, might necessitate that you be willing to do some searching on your own.
The best way to begin a search is by spending some time with the Career Planning section of the Illinois State Finance, Insurance & Law Department's Web site (including this Insider's Perspectives section). See what types of jobs appeal to you and what types of financial or non-financial organizations offer these career paths; you will get better career insights through an internship learning from people who spend each day doing the work that you hope, one day, to do professionally. (If you are unsure, or have varied interests, consider trying to arrange a rotating position involving different financial applications within an organization.) After you have a good idea of the type of organization and activity you would like to build an internship around, follow the steps discussed below.
- Attend internship fairs sponsored by the ISU Career Center.
- Go to e-recruiting web sites to find firms or agencies that offer internships.
- Ask organizational representatives at Senior Day whether their employers provide internships, and if so how you can apply.
- Look in the Yellow Pages of the telephone book for the community where you would like to do an internship to find organizations to contact. Consider financial firms (such as banks), but also include non-financial companies (such as manufacturers) that are large enough to have financial operations managed by full-time, well trained professionals. A company's main headquarters usually is a better source of internships than would be a smaller regional office or distribution center.
- Consider interning with a governmental unit or agency, or with a not-for-profit or volunteer organization. These types of organizations have complex financial management issues to deal with just like businesses do, and they sometimes provide excellent internships in finance and a range of other business and non-business areas.
- Make a personal visit to one or more organizations' offices. Be dressed professionally. Have a letter that indicates your desire to do an internship and spells out your qualifications and interests. Even if you are able to do no more than leave the letter at the reception desk, your professional demeanor can make a good impression on someone with access to those who select interns. But, if possible, ask if you can speak directly with someone who makes decisions on selecting interns.
- Talk to professionals who visit campus, such as people who speak at meetings of the Financial Management Association or other student organizations, to see if their employers, or other firms or agencies they deal with, sponsor internships. Also ask your finance professors for suggested contacts.
- Seek help from your friends and family members, especially those who work in the financial sector or whose work brings them into regular contact with financial professionals. Students sometimes are reluctant to use such contacts when looking for internships, saying they want to do things “on their own” and do not want to be seen as benefiting from favoritism. But remember that a contact can do no more than get you the chance to talk with someone; once the interview starts you do have to make it on your own. No professional recruiter would harm his or her employer by bringing an unsuitable person into an internship or any other position, no matter whose niece or neighbor the candidate is.
- If a company does not offer internships, or if you have missed an application deadline or otherwise do not qualify for its internship program, ask about the possibility of doing a “special project.” Some companies view internships – there is no standard definition – as organized programs that require lengthy application and planning processes. Using language that suggests a less regimented arrangement might open the door to a productive discussion. A financial manager might welcome the chance to bring in someone with computer and basic financial analysis skills for a project that regular staffers lack the time to do.
Reasons to Consider Unpaid Internships
The steps discussed above are relevant to both paid and unpaid internships. Unpaid internships, however, merit special discussion because so many students are reluctant (or refuse!) to consider unpaid learning experiences. They are passing up potentially valuable opportunities by failing to recognize that an internship is not a job, but rather a credit-generating class that meets in a non-traditional setting; students usually do not get paid for going to school. Indeed, because an internship is a class rather than a job, unpaid hours at the work site should be limited to the time that might reasonably be devoted to any other senior-level class; no one should be expected to work full-time for an entire summer, for example, without pay. If an internship is paid, on the other hand, the student must expect to put in the hours that meet the employer's needs, even if the need is substantial during a busy time like finals week.
Consider the following additional benefits of unpaid internships.
- They can be easier to arrange, because their availability is not budget-driven.
- While students may appreciate pay, internships sometimes actually are better learning experiences when they are unpaid. Employers who bring in paid interns sometimes end up assigning routine, low-skill tasks to justify the salary expense. In an unpaid internship the focus is on the learning, not on the sponsor's getting its “money's worth.” In fact, legal issues would arise if an unpaid intern were assigned to do the kind of routine, non-educational work that people are supposed to be paid to do.
- The Finance internship coordinator has more power to intervene on the student's behalf when problems arise if the internship is unpaid. Interestingly, when internship problems do arise they tend to be in the paid situations in which the university has little clout.
- Typically there is no need to compete against others for an unpaid internship spot (although some unpaid internships are seen as so desirable that they actually require competitive interviewing). A low-pressure interviewing process, followed by a quality learning experience in a professional setting, builds confidence for the high-pressure interviews you are likely to face later when looking for a full-time professional job.
- The sponsoring organization is less likely to have concerns about the applicant's grades or prior work experience. An interesting irony relating to highly visible paid internships is that sometimes the students who get them – those with terrific grades and a lot of work experience, including prior internships – are the ones who do not really need them, while the student who could truly benefit from an internship is shut out. Unpaid internship positions help to fill that void. Organizations hiring graduates for full-time professional positions have been known to place high value on candidates who completed unpaid internships, viewing them as individuals who are especially willing to sacrifice and committed to learning.
The points raised above are not intended to steer you away from paid internship possibilities. Some outstanding companies and government agencies offer paid internships that are fantastic learning experiences, and you should pursue them if you are interested. In fact, it is generally fine to look into publicized paid internships first, and then consider unpaid options if you are not successful, since unpaid positions usually can be arranged with much less lead time. But do remain mindful of the benefits that unpaid internships can provide; many an ISU Finance graduate looks back with great satisfaction on a small investment made (the pay given up) in return for a top-quality, life-changing learning opportunity.
