Companies are expected to bring on 7 percent more interns this year than they did in 2010, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Kamila E. Misiak in the Westfield office of Tighe & Bond, an engineering firm.WESTFIELD – Kamila E. Misiak says she started noticing manholes once she started her internship with the Westfield-based engineering firm Tighe & Bond.
“There is so much underground. You don’t think about what is underneath the street,” the 20-year-old civil engineering major at Northeastern University said. “It’s interesting how it all comes together.”
She’s in the second year of a five-year program at Northeastern and has been doing a paid six-month co-op, or internship, with Tighe & Bond since January. One of the projects she’s working on will improve Chicopee’s sewer system.
“I’m definitely getting more responsibility as things go on,”
she said. “I haven’t had that many civil engineering classes so it’s all new. I’m absolutely loving this.”
Companies are expected to bring on 7 percent more interns this year than they did in 2010, according to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers in Bethlehem, Pa. Intern demand tends to follow the job market and the economy as a whole, said Edwin W. Koc
“It’s a better year this year,” he said. “We hear that from all our members. In 2009 full-time hiring was down 20 percent. Last year it bounced back a little bit and gained 5 percent.”
But Koc cautioned that the number of job-seeking college graduates and intern-seeking college students rises each year.
Fewer internships are paid in the post-recession economy, said Stephanie B. Kelly a professor and the internship coordinator for the geography and regional planning program at Westfield State University.
“When we land them for pay, it is particularly exciting” she said. “Often times they just have to chalk it up to getting experience.”
Kelly said her students work in obvious places – private commercial developers and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission – and in roles that would not leap to mind, like police departments and emergency preparedness agencies.
“If something goes wrong, how do you get people out of an area?,” she said. “We have a lot of people in emergency planning.”
The goal is to prepare students for the workplace, she said.
“It differentiates the students ,” she said. “They don’t want to have an academic transcript. They have more going for them than just the typical student who just sat in the classroom.”
Koc said 57 percent of companies told his organization that they plan to convert at least some of their interns into full-time hires.
David E. Pinsky, president of Tighe and Bond, said the internships are a proving ground.
“With any luck it might result in a permanent hire once they graduate from school,” he said.
