Q: My career counselor at school is pushing me to find an internship next semester, is that a good idea, where can someone with a disability look for internships?

An internship is one of the best ways to begin a career. Some people don’t do internships because they are either unpaid or don’t pay much, because they feel unqualified, or simply because they don’t do much research about them. However, internships are the single best way for students to get a foot in the door in a business or an industry that they are interested in having a career in.

There are several major positive results of an internship:

1. An intern gets experience.
   
2. An intern can put this on her/his resume.
   
3. An intern makes professional contacts and friends who can give advice and help the intern eventually get a job.
   
4. An intern may be paid.
   
5. An intern can learn whether or not she/he likes working in a certain field.
   

Obviously, all of these results are related and experience is the key. When a student graduates from college and is looking for work, potential employers have no way of knowing whether the student is capable of handling a job. If a potential employer can see on a student’s resume that the student had an internship that gave the student the chance to employ his or her skills in a work environment, that lets the potential employer know that the student truly has an idea what it takes to do a good job. At the same time, a person in an internship gains a network of colleagues and friends who can help him or her find jobs and can write him or her recommendations when the student applies for a job. Often, an internship can even lead to a job in the very same office where the intern is doing his or her internship.

In the current economic recession, with scarce job openings and large numbers of people looking for work, it is important for jobseekers to do whatever they can to make themselves stand out when they are applying for work. Having an internship is one of the best ways to do so. A couple of major internship programs for people with disabilities exist:

• The Workforce Recruitment Program is a federal program that works to connect students with disabilities and employers for summer internships and jobs.
  
• Emerging Leaders is a program of the National Business & Disability Council and helps place students from around the country in internships in many large companies.
  
• Entry Point is a program for students in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math that helps place them in internships at employers such as Google, Lockheed, NASA, and IBM.
  

Many more internships for students with disabilities are also listed at Proyecto Visión.