Of course, just like PhD graduates who can do a career oriented postdocs, the Bachelor and Master Student may strategically choose a career oriented internship. Therefore in the same way, there are three types of internship available:
1. Academic Internships: The student gets involved in an ongoing project in a university, and conducts research in a particular area. This benefits the student in continuing to learn and apply their technical skills. The benefit to the university is revenue from the voluntary work or low cost work done by the intern.
2. Industrial Internships – The student/intern works with a non-university company to conduct research and development in a very specific area that the company is interested in. Typically, the company will engage an intern with the end goal of being able to develop and release a new product. A simple example would be a software company may be very interested in an intern after their graduation. The students may receive some money for the internship, however the company usually do not pay a salary compared to a normal engineer.
3. Career-oriented Internships – this type of Internship focuses on the career of the student/intern, rather than the interests of a university or a company. While industry and academic interns can be limited to topics, time or locations, the career-oriented internships typically only take a few months. They allow the student/intern to develop the management and technical skills they require to take them into an industrial position. The purpose of the career oriented internship are usually the destination or position targeted afterward. Cademix Institute of Technology and the Career Autopilot Program focus on this type of Internship, with the aim of moving into an industrial or academic position.
The Main question in all three types is the following: Who benefits from the internship and who undertakes the cost?
In this way it could be argued that a career-oriented internship or tech career acceleration programs are the most important choices for a fresh graduate. However, as this type of internship has the least benefit to universities/companies, they are far less abundant. Often, a student even has to pay to participate in a career oriented post doc, however it is seen that the return on their investment [in their career] is high enough to justify this.