Once a nice-to-have, work experience is becoming a must-have for anyone starting out in a career.
Yet, for many entering a new career, time spent on the job is a rare commodity. This trend only underscores the value that internships and other real experiences can offer graduates entering skills-heavy fields like business.
A new survey from the job site ZipRecruiter suggests that employers are twice as likely to hire a graduate who worked in a relevant field while in school. The website Indeed calls this trend “experience creep,” when employers want higher levels of experience for entry-level positions—the very thing that most career-starters lack. Moreover, most positions requiring a year or less of experience ask for general skillsets rather than formal education. The top three categories being food preparation and service, driving, and cleaning and sanitation.
“Internships can significantly improve the chances of getting hired in today’s job market, while reducing the likelihood of underemployment by 50%,” said Caterina Caiazza, who leads career development at Golisano Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship. “But it’s getting harder to find internships outside of niche sectors where they are required for certification or training.”
Postings for internships are currently 11 points below the 2024 level, the lowest since before the pandemic, according to Indeed. The bulk of postings (15.5%) are within the pharmaceutical sector, where internships are a requirement for becoming a pharmacist. Students in fields where they are not required, like business, may feel the downward trend more acutely.
New education models are coming online that put more focus on career development than has traditionally been done in higher education. Golisano Institute has been a pioneer in this space since opening in 2023.
“We’re reducing barriers to internship opportunities many students have because they lack social capital,” Caiazza explained. “We’re helping students build social networks while connecting businesses with a new pipeline of high-quality, early-career talent.”
“Because internships are baked into our academic program, students are able to fully explore multiple career interests. Ultimately, this leads to more sustainable long-term career decisions,” she added.
Flipping the script
Over recent decades, adult learners like Gina Perna make up at least a third of the postsecondary student population. Perna enrolled in the institute’s two-year program in 2024 to make a career pivot.
“I didn’t have time for four years,” Perna explained. “I’m a single mother of two, and [the Golisano Institute program] sounded like something that could deliver results.”
Now in the seventh quarter of the program, she has discovered a career path in the corporate arena that she never thought was open to her. The key to that discovery? An internship with Radionix, part of the global electronics manufacturing company Keenfinity Group.
“In our classrooms we are with real companies and we are doing real work,” Perna said. “I’ve been able to apply the skills and the knowledge from these classrooms in a work environment, so it’s really come full circle for me.”
Perna’s internship experience and what she’s learned in the classroom has given her confidence about launching her career after graduation.
“I found somewhere I can plant my feet and grow, and that makes this opportunity even more valuable to me because there was support and guidance and mentorship,” Perna explained. “And with these internships, there’s possibilities for future employment.”
A career jump-starter
Many come to Golisano Institute right after graduating high school. For these younger students, the program is a way to accelerate the start of a career in business.
Twenty-year-old Ellah Jeffries is currently finishing an internship with WROC-TV, a local news station based in Rochester, New York. In the role, Jeffries is learning firsthand the television station’s business operation, which produces advertising for a range of clients. She chose the internship to dive deeper into media production, a field she discovered through her studies.
“I would say internships are a very important part of Golisano Institute because without having this internship specifically, I wouldn’t have known how much I really do like production,” Jeffries said.
“Because envisioning it in my head isn’t the same as going out and actually performing the tasks and creating the narratives and commercials.”
“And I can transfer that over to other production companies,” she added.
Jack Ruter is another student who enrolled from high school. Like Jeffries, his internship experiences so far have helped him zero in on an area of business he discovered through the program.
“[The internships are] stepping stones onto what I look to do more of in the future, especially with quarter eight being a full time experience,” Ruter said. “So through the classes at the institute, I’ve learned skills that I’ve been able to move over into my internship, and I’ve gotten to experience firsthand.”
Ruter spent the internship in his third quarter on the risk and finance teams at Paychex Inc. He appreciated the hands-on learning; he even led a project that recovered $6,000 from unpaid accounts. Ultimately, his time at Paychex inspired him to dig deeper into what he wanted to do in his career.
“I’ve always wanted to be in sports,” he explained. “And also for our entrepreneurship class, I did my whole class on game-day operations for an ice-hockey business or team.”
Ruter is spending his seventh quarter with the Rochester Americans, a team in the American Hockey League that is affiliated with the Buffalo Sabres (National Hockey League). In this role, he works with the team’s game-presentation department, which handles fan engagement during games along with partnerships with area businesses.
“I get to see what it really is like to work in a sports organization for 11 weeks,” Ruter commented. “And they’re great learning opportunities for my future endeavors.”
How it works
About 20% of Golisano Institute’s curriculum includes career experiences. For example, the institute’s flagship two-year (eight-quarter) business and entrepreneurship program requires three internships.
Each is curated to align with a student’s career goals. The first is ten hours per week in the third quarter. Then, in the seventh quarter, students complete a 20-hour-per-week internship. Next, they do a full-time internship for the last quarter in the program.
“The career development staff really helped me out after my Quarter 3 field experience,” said Ruter. “I really wanted to pivot. And so they helped me really clarify what I wanted to do. And they helped me figure out how I was actually going to do it.”
Perna, Jeffries, and Ruter all valued the lead they took in choosing internships that match their career ambitions. They also all stressed the continual support they received—and continue to receive—from Golisano Institute’s career-development team throughout the process.
“I feel that what was so important to me in my internship was to really, really lean forward on career development, lean on that department, ask the questions,” Perna noted.
