www.broadwayworld.com: Internship application season is officially underway! With such an array of careers in theatre at your fingertips, an internship can be a great way to explore different areas of the community and learn some vital skills. To help you navigate it all and prepare you to apply, we're giving you an inside look at some of the New York theatre community's most coveted internships, including Feinstein's/54 Below, Marathon Digital, and more to see what the day-to-day intern life is like and what these companies look for in applicants.
10 comments:
Internships can be a great way to try working in a part of the entertainment industry that you don't know as much about, or perhaps want to see if a given place is right for you. Unfortunately, finding the right internship can be really difficult! Applying to internships can be like throwing darts: Just keep putting out applications until a few places say yes. I myself applied to over twenty organizations, and was only accepted to a few of them. Navigating through internship applications can be very difficult- many organizations have as little as a blurb about internships and an email to direct your resume and cover letter. On the flip side, some organizations have time and energy intensive forms to fill out that ask for every little detail of your life. Keeping track of everything that you need for every position you apply for can be a difficult task. I have adopted the Carnegie Scenic project checklist and modified it to work as an application progress chart with some info and notes on each position. This helps me stay ahead of the game during internship application season!
I am not a fan of the internship application process. As Al mentioned, in some cases it is just a blurb about where to send your resume and cover letter. I am also not a fan of internships in general because of the way that many companies treat their interns. Any internship that promises great exposure, superior networking, and working in a great team centric environment but offers no pay or housing should be avoided like Europe during the plague. I like that this company is offering an hourly pay, but at a maximum of 24 hours per week at 15/hr and the weekly pay comes out to 360.00. Take 30% off for taxes and your take home is 252.00 per week. That may not be enough to cover housing, food, and transport. I also wish more companies did what Situation did in the article and provide a bit more in depth about what an intern can expect with the organization. If you want to recruit top talent, you ask for specifics. If you want to recruit top interns, you should set the same standard.
As someone who has never really had to apply to internships before, I am apprehensive and unsure how to start to look for work experience this summer. That being said, this article didn’t really do much for me since it focused on marketing agencies and social media positions in New York City. I’ll probably end up attacking the internship hunt much like I did for my college applications: spreadsheets, deadlines written down everywhere, haphazard for everyone but me. Every internship that I skimmed is wildly different in terms of pay, housing, and work hours, which I know is something that I need to watch out for. Even within the article, pay/benefits range from a weekly stipend & unlimited metrocard to “college credit and a LOT of dope snacks.” Personally, I can live without the “dope snacks,” especially in New York City where everything is wildly expensive. But in this article, it was interesting to learn a bit about the companies behind much of Broadway’s marketing.
Applying for internships is literally one of the most stressful things for me. For a lot of internship positions, the qualifications and necessitations provided by a certain company are often vague or just straight up not useful. I really like how this article breaks down how the various companies operate: “what is the day-to-day job like for an intern?”, “qualities/skills [that they] look for”, time commitment, compensation, etc. For me, companies that offer no compensation (i.e., “a LOT of dope snacks”) are almost always red flags. If a company only has the means to “give you great exposure”, there are probably other, better opportunities that could also afford to compensate you for your time. Because, at the end of the day, you can’t keep the lights on with exposure or networking. Especially because of how important internships can be on a personal level in terms of fit, and also in regards to students discerning what they want their future career path to look like, it is just as important to find an internship that will fit.
Oh golly, this article makes me very excited. Also stressed, but mostly excited. This upcoming summer feels like an endless pot of opportunities just waiting for me. It is the first time where I feel truly free to go and explore the workforce that is out there waiting for me and I cannot wait. I know I have a long way to go on updating my portfolio (aka completely scrapping it and starting over) and refining my resume, but it truly feels like the world is my oyster, and articles like these only get me more jazzed about applying to different opportunities across the country. There is so much theatre in this world and so so much left for me to learn and I am so ready to just dive in headfirst, but these articles help ground me a bit and remind me of what I need to accomplish and focus on before the busy application season catches up to me.
This article seems like it will be really helpful! I actually bookmarked it for future reference! I think that it's really helpful to see all of this information in one place as well as hear some of the things companies want to see/hear from you in your application! I also love this article's focus on what the internships have to offer for their participants as far as experience and salary. Because, as important as it is to get a "big" internship with an "important" company, it's really really important to find an internship that enriches our education and makes us happy. It sounds dumb, but I really do think that that's the most important part. I'm really excited for this summer and all the fun opportunities it might bring! I do think the internships picked in this article are kinda weird. Some variety might have been nice, but almost all of the internships were marketing or administration, which I just thought was odd. I think the article is very helpful in general, but not to everyone.
This is the first time that I have really seen an article like this displaying multiple internships for different places in one article. Its an interesting idea for both the companies and for people applying for the internships as they can see their different options in one view and compare directly. That being said I think that becomes one of the hardest parts of finding an internship. While all of these may sound similar and good odds are there truly are better and worse internships in our industry and sometimes it feels damn near impossible to figure out what those are when you are applying. I know I have certainly experienced this in the past when looking for summer work not sure of quite where to look or who to go with only to question the decisions I have made once I’m in the job. And they all change so frequently to that you really never quite know if you are applying for the same job someone you know did there the year before.
The internship application process can be one of the most stressful processes for students. I know I always struggled constantly sending out application after application to hear only crickets in response. I appreciate this article for almost flipping the interview process on its head and allowing us, the readers, to get to know the companies. Given that these internships give lifelong connections at a crucial time in a student's academic career, knowing that these companies can give you what you need is vital. When applying, I've always found it is important to set personal goals way ahead of filling out the first application about what you ultimately want out of an internship. Knowing what you want out of a program when it comes to money, connections, work-environment, time-commitment, and level of responsibility can go a long way in selecting programs to best suit your needs. I think I will take some of these questions and flip them around the next time an interviewer asks me, "So do you have any questions for us?".
I agree with Bridget in terms of, as a student who have never applied to internships, currently being totally lost and not knowing where to start, this article was not helpful as much as the title seemed to be. In addition, being an international student in the States makes the situation extremely complicated. What can I do within my current visa status? Even if I get an internship, and luckily get a job, how do I get a work visa after graduating the university? How much money do I need during the stay in the New York City, where I have no one to rely on? However, whether it is true or not, reading about how all the companies accept diversity and how they are willing to provide interns fundamental knowledge and not expecting them to be highly experienced, did push me from behind to face all these questions and to actually put myself in action.
While I don’t know how much I learned about navigating the New York Theatre Community from reading this article, I definitely learned about four internships at companies that are a part of an aspect of the theatre industry that I hadn’t ever thought of before, but definitely want to explore further. Overall, internships are a game of privilege and chance, that many people are unable to do because of the financial burden an unpaid or low-paid internship might cause. I recognize the privilege I personally have, since I am in a place where I can work at low-paid internships and make the connections and network in a way that others might not be able to. I think it is important to remember going into the internship application process your own worth as an individual, and make sure that aligns with what the company has to offer and what they actually have to offer (financial compensation, exposure, reputation, experience, etc) because it can be easy to devalue yourself and your work and not get the full benefits of an internship if you don’t think about all aspects of what it is really offering you.
Post a Comment