Career advice isn’t what I was thinking about when bootstrapping this blog, but a conversation I overheard recently brought back older thoughts about this question:
Should I accept a job offer from my employer after my very first internship there?
This is an interesting topic that, I believe, is pondered far too rarely, or generally way after its relevance has faded.
After checking the obvious like do you like the job? and are the conditions decent?, most people I know of will tend to very quickly say yes. However, I’ve witnessed the following:
The perceived quality of a first job offer is practically uncorrelated with the ex-intern’s satisfaction after a year or two.
Now, I’m a huge fan of satisficing, that is, having some requirements and settling on one of the few (if not single) first options that fulfils them instead of seeking the best possible match (that is, maximising). But to do so, you need requirements and metrics that somehow correlate with future satisfaction.
How complete are your requirements?
The issue I see in most fresh graduates is that they have an incomplete set of requirements.
As Moxie elegantly summarised: Tyler Durden was wrong, your are your job. Life at work after your studies is a bit like a long, never-ending semester, and you’re probably not expecting this when you leave school.
Your first job(s) will teach you a lot of new things, not only about whatever your specialty is, but also about you and your relation to reality. An important goal, at this point, is to get a reasonably representative sample of what it’s like outside of school.
Breaking out of convenience
Simply put, this means: even if an offer after an internship looks like a dream job, consider refusing it if it’s your ownly experience so far, because your definition of a dream job is very likely incomplete.
Secondly, in the long run, comfort can really get at you, as tangentially remarked here. For as long as the tech industry is growing (more on that question below), obtaining various different experiences is a clear advantage that will allow you to find a safe nest when the need arises – assuming you can get things done without hopping to the next job too quickly (another question entirely).
Then, also note that you can likely come back later if things don’t work out elsewhere: assuming your employer made you an offer in good faith, he’s likely to still like the idea of hiring you in the future.
From the employer’s perspective
On the employer side, of course, it’s a huge advantage to be able to retain interns, especially if they haven’t explored the field:
- you essentially had a long interview process with them;
- they probably don’t know how much they are in demand;
- at first glance any condition you offer them will seem amazing: most go from earning nothing to making as much as their parents or older relatives.
Again, don’t get me wrong: it’s an amazing thing to be able to retain good interns, but in the medium to long run it’s unclear to me if it is beneficiary to either party.
If ex-interns are your only hiring channel, you isolate your company from a good source of information about how things work at other places in your industry, and this may eventually hurt you: diversification is important.
In practice
Looking back, I certainly agree that the above is not easy to implement. Somehow, when receiving my diploma I had worked for an administration, a small tourism company and a little start-up project; I was still utterly clueless – which my first job taught me aftwerwards – but already attuned to a few personal things I saw as important in a job.
The last intern I supervised also has a nice approach: he has been working part-time since his bachelor, hence already bringing us some very useful experience. Now he’s going back to classes while working part-time for us.
Sandwiching in some work, either on the side or in between semesters also allows you to focus more on interesting courses, another strong advantage if your school has a bigger number of bullshit courses you’d rather avoid.
Finally: go read Moxie’s article. Really, it’s worth it.
The final disclaimer
Obviously, all of the above only applies if you have multiple choices. Exactly how much choice you need depends on your risk appetite, though regarding that subject, understanding your relation to risk is one of the other things I believe you need to find out reasonably quickly once you leave school.