Magic Pot of Jobs

For those who have been discharged from the military, finding a job can often be difficult. The problem isn’t that these individuals lack skills, training, or self discipline. For the most part, veterans have these traits is spades. The issues comes when an individual only has military experience on their resume and does not know how to word their skills in a way that translate to civilian employers.

A large portion of military job titles lack a private sector counter part in name, but not in function. When looking for a veteran job one has to analyze the different responsibilities they had while in the military to determine the best way to explain these qualifications to civilian employers. Many ex-service members simply don’t realize the skills that the military has given them due to the fact that a lot of these qualifications are secondary or are more subtle in their daily work. For example, many veterans do not think about their past experience in personnel management, inventory and supply supervision, and project management. These are all skills that are deeply desire by company human resource departments.

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For those who have plans of landing a government job, an internship with a federal agency can be the difference between receiving a full-time position or being lost in a sea of applicants. With a large number of these agencies offering such programs to students, those who are interested in government internships have a variety of different possibilities to consider.

These government internships aren’t only open to those who are political science majors. With federal agencies handling a myriad of different task necessary to keeping the country running, there are positions for students who have interest and talents in almost all academic fields.

Due to the fact that government internships are even more competitive than many of their public sector counterparts, it is important to begin researching the options nine months to a year in advance. With so many individuals applying to be part of these programs, the deadline for these positions are often a semester or more prior to the time the internship is to take place. This is necessary to allow those in charge of choosing from the candidates the time to go over each application. For example, the U.S. Department of State, which places student interns in D.C. and throughout American embassies worldwide, had a November 1st deadline for applications for the summer 2008 internship hopefuls.

Government internship opportunities can be found variety of ways. If one has a particular agency in mind, then that agency’s webpage is usually a good place to start. Almost all of these pages have a link for those who are interested in employment. After clicking on this link, one will often find a list of student positions available.

For those who are not sure which agency they would enjoy interning with, www.studentjobs.gov is a good place to start. After reaching the main page, one will find a link for their e-scholar site in the middle of the display. Here one will find a list of categories such as apprenticeships, grants, fellowships, and internships. At this time the website currently list 75 different government internship programs. These programs allow students to become involved with variety of agencies ranging from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to NASA. Some of these government internships even offer monetary compensation.

Since many of these internships are located in head offices, spending a semester away from home or school may be necessary. But when one considers the doors such an internship can open up, spending a few months away from friends and family in exchange for experience is definitely worth it.