For high school and college students, the summer is a vital time to further discover your talents and explore opportunities to test, develop and put them to good use.

Summers can be used for lots of different purposes—travel, independent projects, summer classes. Recent research, however, shows that summer internships—always seen as valuable—may be even more important than we thought.

In a recent study, having an internship on your resume was more important for getting a job interview than were grades, classes taken, or major. It also insulated against damage from later employment gaps or underemployment.

And while many formal, paid internship programs are likely full by this point, there’s still time to find something worthwhile.

But what if it’s unpaid?

So what!!  You need the experience and exposure more than you need the cash. Find somewhere you’d like to work that is close to home, or close to a family member you could live with, and inquire about unpaid internships.

What’s important to remember is that it’s really up to you as the student to make an internship work for you.

Truthfully there aren’t enough formal internships to go around for the 20M+ high school and college students that could benefit from them.  So students must be prepared to create and initiate one.

Our core mission at Vocatio is to inspire, empower and equip students to navigate the education system toward the passionate and purposeful career of their choice. That mission entrusts the students to bring the motivation and action to turn those insights and employer opportunities into successful results and meaningful careers.

Stay tuned… we’ll be sharing some specific thoughts on how we’re building a community of candidates and employers so that we can work together to do just that in future posts/tweets/etc.

Patrick Jones
Founder & CEO
Patrick@vocatio.com