With internship participation on the rise, student applicants have an increasingly larger job market to compete in.
Employers will increase their number of college-level internships by 10 percent in 2008, according to a survey run by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. An additional survey ran by NACE found that 75 percent of companies claimed they use internships to help identify prospective full-time employees.
Lauren Grunstein and Stephanie Gurtman predicted this rising trend and tackled it head-on by launching InternshipRatings.com, a Web site with a motto that asks: "Is it worth the coffee?"
"The idea for InternshipRatings.com came from Stephanie's and my own internship experience," said Lauren Grunstein, the co-founder of the Web site. "We went through the process of selecting our summer internships together and had very different ideas of what our companies would be like. In one conversation, we realized that it's hard to know what it's really like to be an intern at companies, and from there, we came up with the idea for the Web site."
With about 430 members and 250 companies rated, InternshipRatings.com stands as a readily usable resource for students to "rate, research, and compare internships in various industries across the United States," according to the Web site.
Current company listings include, but are not limited, to XM Satellite Radio, ABC, MTV, Lehman Brothers and AOL.
Grunstein and Gurtman, two juniors at Boston University, launched the Web site in February, and Grunstein said they are already starting to hear about students finding their internships through the site.
"Just the other day, a company told us that someone they interviewed found them through the site," Grunstein said. "As the site builds more ratings, we hope that students begin to use it more as a resource for finding the best internships."
The Web site also offers a feature entitled, "Take Note" which is an interactive career advice blog featuring articles by executives and career service professionals across the country, according to the Web site.
Columnists include associates from highly competitive career spots such as Major League Baseball, General Mills, Pfizer and Ernst & Young, all offering expert advice to students preparing to launch their careers into professionalism.
"They have advice coming from the mouths of CEOs, which is extremely useful when preparing for a resume or interview or when simply browsing for internships, which I will definitely use," said Joseph Schott, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore, about the "Take Note" feature of the Web site.
In addition to the perks on the Web site, InternshipRatings.com allows students to see the "Top 5 Rated" companies as well as the "Worst 5 Rated" companies. Among the top five rated companies is Marlo Marketing/Communications, a marketing and communications agency based in Boston.
"We try to treat all of our interns with a thoughtful mentorship, so I'm delighted to learn that the Marlo Marketing/Communications team is impressing the interns as much as they are impressing us," said Marlo Fogelman, the principal and CEO of Marlo Marketing/Communications.
Fogelman said she thinks internships are crucial to a student's resume.
"Today's marketplace is extremely competitive, especially in our field of marketing and communications," Fogelman said. "Anything a soon to be entry-level job prospect can do to differentiate themselves from the thousands of others like them is worthwhile."
University students can utilize InternshipRatings.com as not only a research tool when browsing for internship opportunities, but also as a go-to for questions on resume-building and interview tips.
Future plans for the Web site include integrating video programs, a back-end feature for career service centers to see ratings from their university and job postings in the form of advertisements, Grunstein said.
"I think that sites such as InternshipRatings.com are definitely useful tools," Fogelman said. "It is simply one tool in a student's arsenal."
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