An Opportunity to Rate Your Internship

Thursday August 21, 2008

Have you just completed an awesome internship that you'd like to share with others? Or maybe your internship was not so hot and you just want to give a heads up to other students on what to be aware of if they are thinking of doing an internship with the same company?

Two BU students, Lauren and Stephanie, started a company around seven months ago called InternshipRatings.com, offering students an opportunity to rate their internship from a student’s perspective. InternshipRatings.com provides students with an outlet to share their experiences; and for the employer, it provides valuable feedback with a chance to improve on their internships and make them more appealing to students. The homepage also lists the the most recently rated, the top five rated, and the worst five rated internships. The Take Note section is a blog written by industry professionals that can be automatically sent out to subscribers via a RSS feed.

InternshipRatings.com allows you to search for internships by state using a map that is listed on the homepage. Once you identify the state, you can search for internships by city and/or industry or just search by company name. Once a city is identified, a list of employers will pop up.

Each listed internship is rated on a percentage basis and provides information on what the intern liked best about the internship (opportunities for networking, salary/compensation, letter(s) of recommendation, fair hours, etc.). For example, an intern at Arnold in New York City rated the internship at 100% while another intern interning at the same company in Boston, gave it a 60%. You can learn why by reading it on the site. Students can also complete a comment section to provide more detail on what they see as the pluses and minuses of an internship.

I really like this forum for sharing internship information and I hope it catches on. InternshipRatings.com permits students and companies to see internships from the eyes of the student; providing students an opportunity to make a more informed decision while giving companies a chance to recognize and continue with the good things they are doing and improve upon the not so good things that students are identifying.