Today’s job market is fierce and in order to be competitive I find a lot of people my age are looking into internships as an experience-based stepping stone into their post-college job. Adding some “real world” experience to your resume as you are exiting college is great – which is why I am suggesting that you take that same six months and start a small business instead.
Most people initially get soft about this kind of possibility because they have some notion of entrepreneurs as swashbuckling risk-takers. Not only is this gravely inaccurate, it also prevents a lot of capable people from exploring the beauty of creating and being at risk to learn something about themselves. Starting and running a small business poses no more risk than an internship while delivering an experience that is an order of magnitude greater than working for free at CorporateAmerica.com.
| Internship | Small Business |
| Conduct an internet search to find companies that might want to hire your skill set. | Conduct an internet search to find people/businesses that might want your product or service (coffee, cupcakes, car-detailing, etc.) |
| Reach to your personal network to find connections within potential companies that you want to intern at. Often you are cold-calling companies, asking for interviews. | Reach out to your personal network to find connections with potential customers that would find your product valuable. Often you are cold-calling sales leads out of the phone book, asking for meetings. |
| Face a lot of rejection, get a couple of interviews, face more rejection – maybe you get some offers. | Face a lot of rejection, get a couple of sales meetings, face more rejection – maybe you get offers for a second meeting. |
| Land a position (maybe). | Get a sale (eventually). |
| Work long hours for minimal or no pay. | Work long hours for minimal or no pay…at first. |
| You are the office bitch. No one cares about your feelings, just your ability to get coffee and bagels and occasionally be a spreadsheet jockey. | You are your customers’ bitch. No one cares about your feelings, just your ability to deliver a quality product on time and make things right when mistakes happen. |
| Build skills necessary to be a peon in a corporate machine and that the only way to be successful is to be politically astute enough to place your name on winning projects and subtly shift blame when things go wrong. | Build skills necessary to be a manager by applying all your “boring” undergrad classes that are now critical components to make the whole business work. If you don’t you will run out of money...fast. |
| Learn to appeal to authority and pull a lever. | Learn that you are more self-reliant than you originally thought. You experience ownership, working smart and creative problem solving on-demand. |
| Maybe you get offered a position at the end of the internship. | Maybe your company shuts down, maybe it succeeds, or maybe it sits somewhere in the middle. – the cool part is that you have much more say about the enterprise’s outcome. |
| Repeat. Try to explain to new employers why you didn’t get offered a position at the end of the internship. | Repeat. This time it’s easier because you avoid all the mistakes you made last time. |
See? There’s not much difference in the effort required to start and run a small business over interning at a company. From a learning perspective they are the same except that they are on opposite ends of the continuum. Both put you at risk to learn something about yourself. What you want to be at risk to learn is entirely up to you.
If you plan on getting a job in Corporate America, there is (seriously) nothing wrong with that. In fact, I recommend that you still start a small business instead of interning. The reasoning behind this suggestion is rather simple: everyone you are competing with has been interning at or has been laid off from Corporate America. Think of how easy it will be to stand out from the bland crowd and get a job when you roll in with some hard-earned entrepreneurial experience.
If you want to create your own internship and want some tips for the next steps, feel free to check out my other article on {Branded}: Start Up in a Box.
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