The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Pandemic taking toll on internships
Generations of college students have had it drummed into their heads that successful summer internships are a critical step in landing a good job upon graduation.
Some who already had landed internships for this summer, however, have seen their plans change through no fault of their own.
A recent survey from talent acquisition software company Yello found that the conditions surrounding the coronavirous pandemic resulted in internships being canceled for a little more than one-third of college students who responded.
“We remember how difficult the 2008 recession was for both employers and student job seekers, and we know that the COVID-19 outbreak poses similar challenges,” Jason Weingarten, Yellow’s co-founder
and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Continuing to invest in early talent development is crucial to the success of the future workforce, and is key to ensuring a lasting talent pipeline for your organization.”
But rather than scrap this year’s summer internship programs, some corporations are quickly pivoting to offer virtual internships.
Webster Bank and CVS Health are among companies taking their internship programs online this summer.
Rhode Island-based CVS Health, which includes insurance giant Aetna, notified this year’s group of 304 graduates and undergraduate students in early March that they had been accepted to the internship program.
Less than a month later, the company informed its interns the program was going online, said Bethany Gillen, head of university and diversity, talent acquisition for CVS Health.
“We considered various options (for the program) as well as the safety of our colleagues and interns,” Gillen said. “In a normal business environment, we would not only have located interns, but would have been finding housing for them.”
About one-third of the program’s participants are working with CVS Health corporate offices in the Hartford area, she said.
“They are being aligned with leaders working the Hartford area,” Gillen said. “They could be working in areas such as finance, IT (information technology) and underwriting.”
The CVS Health interns in this summer’s program include students from 10 Connecticut colleges and universities, including Yale, Quinnipiac, Sacred Heart and the University of Connecticut, she said. The interns are from 38 municipalities, including Branford, Bridgeport, Brookfield, Cheshire, Guilford, Hamden, Milford, Monroe, Stamford, Wallingford and Woodbridge.
Gillen called the summer intership program at CVS Heath, which begins June 1 and ends Aug. 7, “a strategic pipeline” for the company.
“The majority of them are a rising seniors, who either have one semester left or one more full year,” she said. “Our expectation is that if they are a good fit for us and we are good fit for them, our goal is to have about 65 percent of these individuals become part of the enterprise.
Benchmarks for hiring students who are summer interns at health care companies “is about 50 percent and we are exceeding that,” Gillen said.
Webster has a much smaller internship program, with 18 people participating this summer, according to Kelly Raskauskas, a spokeswoman with the Waterbury-based bank. This year’s virtual program will include networking sessions, live webinars and on-demand learning, Raskauskas said.
“The decision to continue with the internship program this year was based on Webster’s strong commitment to the program, and to development for all bankers,” she said when asked whether bank officials had considered scrapping the program for this summer.
Last summer, Webster had 28 interns and ultimately hired 75 percent as permanent, full-time employees, according to Raskauskas.
Wallingford resident Ayal Rosen was scheduled to do an internship at Middlesex Community College as part of his final steps to graduating from the Middletown-based school.
The college took its internship program online because of the pandemic and Rosen said while he is grateful school officials didn’t cancel the program, it feels like something is missing.
“It’s not the same,” Rosen said. “I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of internation from people with many more years of experience. So I feel as though I not getting a much out of it.”
But when he sought to supplement his training by finding a second internship for the remainder of the summer, Rosen said every other internship program he found had been canceled.