Does internship count as employment?
Applying for a job that requires prior work experience? Are you asking yourself, “Does an internship count as employment?” You’re not alone!
Homer, wondering if his Duff Beer internship counts toward the minimum employment required by Springfield Power Company.
The short answer is – yes. An internship is work, so it does count as employment / work experience.
Why internships count as employment
As someone who’s written dozens of job descriptions, I can tell you the reason they include a minimum work requirement: employers want to hire people who’ve done it before.
They’re looking for people who’ve made mistakes, developed processes, and succeeded in the past – people who’ve gone to the right school of experience for the job they need to fill.
A good internship is probably the fastest you’ll ever move up the learning curve: you get to see how people do a job, you have some responsibility and you’re constantly learning – so if a job requires “prior experience,” you can certainly add your internship to your total employment experience to qualify for a job.
When do internships not count as employment
All of that said, there are some circumstances when internships may not count as employment:
- Part-time internships. While you can still include part-time internships in your job experience when applying for a role, employers realize that you didn’t spend as much time (and learn as much) as you would have in a full-time role. So a yearlong part-time internship won’t get you 1 year’s worth of credit for an employer. Typically, it would count for the amount of time it would have taken if you were working full-time.
- Internships that aren’t relevant for the job you’re applying for. Most jobs require a certain amount of relevant prior work experience. So, if your job requires 2 years engineering experience and your internship was in marketing, you’re not going to get credit towards the required experience.
- Internships without full-time work. Let’s say you’ve had a total of 2 years worth of internships. Most jobs looking for two years of work experience won’t accept only internships. (They’ll wonder why you couldn’t get a full-time job.) So, while it’s OK to add internship time to your other experience, it’ll be hard to satisfy an experience requirement with internship experience alone.