TL;DR: It sure can be.
My internship was my first job ever on an academic level, in a corporate setting. Naturally, I was anxious through the whole application process. I attended career workshops well beforehand, talked to advisors, and asked whoever I knew for their experiences. These tips and tricks I learned from others helped enormously in certain aspects of my job search. However, looking back at what I think is a very successful internship, I would say that the one uncompromisable piece of the process is that whatever you are applying to, it has to have a personal meaning.
I landed my internship at data.ai after a month of preparation and actively applying. I sent out 6 applications in total. 2 of which were just me trying out my pure luck (because they were pretty much out of my reach) – results: rejected. The third and fourth ones were the “okay, whatever, this would do” applications that I did out of fear of not being able to find a position on time – they didn’t even reply. And the final two applications? They turned into interviews, and then into offers!
The difference with these two was that I was able to connect my existing experience and its meanings to what I see myself achieving through the internship positions. In other words, I presented my answers to these questions: What have I learned in university (or, frankly, in life so far)? What does this knowledge mean to me and where do my values stand in comparison? How does this internship position align to those meanings and values – and equally important, how can it extend the depth of those meanings and values?
It’s the same logic as saying “because I have these skills, I can do that job, and through doing the job, I will expand my skill”. And using this logic to express my interests and values really gave me confidence in the interviews.
Beyond the application process, I feel that having my host supervisor and manager know a bit more about my values and expectations led to more opportunities in my internship at data.ai. Since I talked about my interest for digital communication research and data science, I was frequently asked for inputs from a communication science perspective, got to handle more data-related tasks, and was encouraged to work on my own data science project with the company’s marketing data, even though I was very new to data science – something completely outside of my marketing job description. And when I failed to get results from this project, I got nothing but even more encouragement and inspiration, as the team surprised me with a data science book when we said goodbye at the end of my internship.
So, the next time you wonder “will this stuff ever be useful in my career?”, just know that as long as you can find personal meanings in your learning (doesn’t necessarily mean you have to agree with whatever is being taught) and find yourself able to continue developing it in your next career move, it will pay off.