New Best Practice Code for High-Quality Internships is good news for students

The launch of the government’s ‘Common Best Practice Code for High-Quality Internships’ is great news for students who will be able to get a greater understanding of what to expect from an internship.

BIS is working with The Gateways to the Professions Collaborative Forum to remove the barriers to professional careers, especially for people from disadvantaged groups.

For graduates in particular the need for work experience is vital; after spending 3 or more years out of work to attain their degree, graduates are aware that their academic qualifications are no longer enough in a saturated graduate job market.

And The Student Room’s dedicated forum for Volunteering, Internships and Work Experience shows that graduates are willing to invest time to research what internships are available and find out from others what experiences they’ve had at various organisations.

Internships being discussed on The Student Room

• Deloitte
• BBC
• Orange
• HSBC
• Tesco

The document explains how improving access to high-quality internships also helps companies to meet their CSR objectives by promoting social mobility and diversity in the professions.
Students also want high quality and to “gain useful experience that would provide transferable skills” (TSR user, ~Purple Rose~), which is something that was lacking in the July 2009 Report on Fair Access to the Professions.

Internships often get a lot of bad press for ‘taking advantage of students to get cheap labour’ but the most informed are aware of the benefits that a well structured internship can provide.

We get students coming to the site for advice and support, asking questions like…
Should I do an internship?

Who to apply for?

How long are summer internships?

Things to do to make my CV stand out?

and hopefully this document will help them to understand more about what an internship actually is, what they can expect to get out of it and how they should be treated.

Lots of activity in The Student Room’s dedicated forum

• 4,900 page views per month
• Over 2000 seperate discussions
• Over 14,000 views of the Deloitte Internship discussion
• Students from all backgrounds; 80% state schooled, 51% with a household income under £24,000, 20% non-white british

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