Internships get canceled or go virtual due to pandemic
LONDON — Yadeen Rashid was flying high in February. He’d just earned stellar grades in his latest semester at Virginia Tech university, where he’s in his third year double majoring in economics and political science. And he’d just landed a summer internship at a data analysis company.
Then the pandemic hit, triggering lockdown restrictions and pushing the U.S. economy into recession. Many companies canceled their internships programs and rescinded job offers — including NTT Data, where Rashid was set to intern.
“I was really upset, not just because finding an internship is hard, but because I actually was very excited to work with them very specifically,” said Rashid, 21.
He said he bears no ill-will to the company and is looking for other internship opportunities.
“But, you know, as time goes on, it gets a little less optimistic.”
Rashid’s experience shows how the global coronavirus crisis, which has already thrown much of the business world into turmoil, is also disrupting summer internships, an important stepping stone to working life for many university students and recent graduates.
Half of all internship openings in the U.S. have been cut since the pandemic outbreak, and 64% of those in the U.K., according to research by Glassdoor, the career website. Hundreds of companies, including AirBnb, Fedex, Gap and Walt Disney Co., have scrapped their summer programs, according to an online database.
Companies use summer internships as a pipeline for recruiting graduates while young people benefit from exposure to real working life.
They can serve as source of income or graduation requirement.
More than 1 in every 6 young workers globally have stopped working during the pandemic, the International Labor Organization said last month. The U.N. labor agency added that the pandemic’s longterm fallout could lead to a “lockdown generation” scarred throughout their working lives.
Some companies are making their internships virtual — mirroring the work-from-home trend that’s swept office life during the pandemic.
E-commerce giant Amazon is hiring more than 8,000 interns for its summer program, which it’s turning into “a virtual model.”
Global consulting firm EY said more than half of its 15,000 internships this year will be in virtual formats. Interns will be assigned a “peer counsellor,” someone who joined the company in the past two years, as well as a more senior “reporting counsellor” who will both regularly check in on them, said Trent Henry, EY’s globalvice a a chair of talent.
At The Associated Press, some internships will either likely be done remotely, some deferred until next year and others have been canceled.
Those who have done virtual internships say it’s a way to learn remote working skills that are more important now that COVID-19 has changed how people work.
Recent graduate Sahar Shabani, 22, did a threemonth remote internship with a development charity based in Thailand from her parents’ home in South London.
Shabani applied in February through Queen Mary University of London, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and international relations.
She checked in by phone every day with her supervisor, who assigned her to research and write reports about topics like corporate social responsibility and then give video presentations on them using Zoom.
“Whether it was in person or not, you still gained those skills or valuable experience,” she said. “It’s a new way of experiencing work.”