Virtual Internships or FT Offer Conversion

Apr 19, 2020 13 Comments

It seems companies are still making decisions and updates to their plans for internships. Latest I heard was L.E.K consulting summer internship was initially rescinded then now converted to full-time offers for 2021. Same at PwC and its Strategy& consulting arm it appears - having initially converted most to virtual experience and now some to just outright full-time offers for 2021 or much shortened shadowing experience.

Granted a lot of the interns do come back as full-time, there are still a few that likely wouldn't have received FT offer due to performance issue. And vice-versa, students use the internship experience to gauge their fit with the company and interest in the work. Is your company following a similar approach? How do you anticipate this playing out in terms of coaching interns remotely or the new hire pool for 2021?

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TOP 13 Comments
  • Virtual internship presents its own challenges as your ability to WFH in college is really dependent on your socioeconomic background creating an uneven playing field
    Apr 19, 2020 3
    • Would be lying if I said it was my own idea. Brought to me by a friend who is going to school online now and he doesn’t necessarily come from a great background, while others at his school (including his friends) are in their summer homes waiting this out
      Apr 20, 2020
    • Yep I see this situation as well - I see articles that talk about how the wealthy take this situation as a time to take a break and rest up, while it's a literal disaster for the impoverished, especially the folks who still need to continue risking their life and go out to work (or worse, who need to work as they live paycheck by paycheck but legally can't).
      Apr 20, 2020
  • Companies are stuck between a rock and a hard place here. It’s important to be able to evaluate young talent but there are major challenges with a virtual program too. These challenges include the potential socioeconomic disparity between candidates that resident2 mentioned above and should be seriously considered.
    Apr 19, 2020 1
    • Yep having gone virtual poses lots of challenges and issues in terms of experienced employees' performance, let alone an incoming intern's. I personally wouldn't want to be in charge of evaluating interns or new hires during this time. Curious to hear from the intern class once they're done this summer on how the experience was.
      Apr 20, 2020
  • New
    peechpeel

    New

    peechpeel
    Heard JPM went fully digital on their summer program
    Apr 19, 2020 1
  • Imperial Capital
    sg02

    Imperial Capital

    sg02
    I’ve seen some banks converting to a 5 week program but still paying for 8.
    Apr 21, 2020 1
  • Feels like there has to be a virtual internship of some kind for firms to really be able to evaluate their interns. Just giving offers would be dangerous
    Apr 19, 2020 1
    • Agree that just flat out converting the internship offers to FT offers seems somewhat of a risky move. Granted firms are smart so I'm sure they're doing this in certain lines of business where traditionally the intern pool was already quite a filtered list with high chance of receiving FT offer at the end of the internship.
      Apr 20, 2020