Magic Pot of Jobs

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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.