Micro Internships vs Part-time Internships: Which One Is Better?

An internship is a temporary assignment with an established, professional business, in which you’ll gain practical, real-world work experience. It’s a good way to explore your potential career, gain hands-on skills, and begin building your resume.

There are many different types of internships, including full-time, part-time, and micro-internships. In this post, we’ll define the scope, as well as look at the pros and cons of both part-time and micro-internships.

What Does an Intern Do?

Most interns spend their allotted time assisting with projects, making important connections through networking, and developing hard and soft skills. “Hard” skills are those that directly contribute to the role, like making phone calls or attending meetings. “Soft” skills include critical-thinking, communication, and empathy.

There are many benefits of internships, and those who take the time to add this notch to their resume can appear more attractive to prospective employers in future.

The Benefits of Internships

An internship means giving up a portion of your free time – just when you’re also likely to be working on completing your education – so you’ll want to know exactly what you’re getting in return. Why you might want to consider pursuing an internship can include:

• Figuring out whether a prospective career path is suited to you. While you may have an idea of what you want to do after high school or college, there’s often no way of knowing whether you’ll enjoy a career or industry until you’ve experienced it.
• Gaining real-world experience in a role, in which you’ll be learning from seasoned professionals who have many years of experience in an industry.
• Starting to build your professional network, which could help open up new opportunities for you after graduation.
• Learning the importance of time management and punctuality as you prepare to transition into the working world.
• Having a competitive edge over other candidates who will be looking to secure the same positions as you when you start applying for roles.

Still, internships can be difficult to manage when you have an otherwise full schedule. Enter, part-time and micro internships, or “micro-internships.”

What is a Micro Internship?

Micro internships are typically short in duration and centered around a single project. For example, MIT micro internships last for between two and four weeks, with interns dedicating anywhere from 10-35 hours each week. Work is specific to a designated project as opposed to involving multiple different areas of a business.

Micro internships for college students offer work experience in a short timeframe minimizing the distractions from your other responsibilities. Provided that the project work is completed within the allotted time, you can use leisure time to schedule your internship around your studies.

What is a Part-time Internship?

While full-time internships may follow a traditional working pattern, part-time internships usually require a time commitment of between 10 and 20 hours per week. They may be completed during the summer months, but some students opt to undertake them during a college semester.

Part-time internships are just as immersive as their full-time counterparts, and time is usually spent on multiple tasks, as opposed to a single project like micro internships.

What’s the Difference Between a Micro Internship and Part-time Internship?

If you can’t decide whether a part-time internship or micro internship is the best option for you, consider the pros and cons of each.

Pros and Cons of Micro Internships

Micro internships are well-suited to students who already have existing and time-consuming commitments. Since they usually focus on a single, short-lived project, there’s generally less workload than you’d face on a part-time or full-time internship. They’re often more flexible too, allowing remote work or the ability to complete work outside of regular working hours as long as it gets done.

Because of their length, multiple micro internships might also be completed in the same year. This means that you could diversify your experience and make your resume all the more attractive to future employers.

However, due to the singular focus on one project, there’s less scope for picking up varied skills and working in different areas of a business. Coaching and oversight, which can help to build your professionalism, career capital,, and network, might also be lacking with a micro internship. Lastly, you’ll need to find legitimate micro internships that offer real-world experience as opposed to companies that are just looking for quick, cheap labor.

Pros and Cons of Part-time Internships

Part-time internships involve a greater degree of varied responsibilities. You’re more likely to experience different parts of a business and work with a broader variety of professionals. Part-time internships also provide coaching, which teaches new skills and builds professional relationships.

If you’re looking to earn some cash to help with the cost of your education, part-time internships can be beneficial because they last longer than micro internships. In other words, you could be earning an intern’s wage for a longer period of time.

Part-time internships require a time commitment of 10-20 hrs. per week, which can be too much for some student’s schedules.

What’s the Best Internship for College Students?

Whether to pursue a micro internship or part-time internship comes down to your personal (and professional) preferences and needs. Considerations can include time commitment, field of work, hard and soft skills acquired, etc.

If you’re looking for a part-time internship that will give you essential real-world experience, college credit, and pay, get in touch with The Selling Factory. The Selling Factory is an on-demand sales development team that hires top students from American universities and trains them on entry-level sales activities for various companies. 

Just one semester with us can impart you with invaluable sales techniques that’ll set you up for any future career, regardless of your goals. Alumni of The Selling Factory have gone on to launch careers at Deloitte and KPMG, Oracle, Johnson & Johnson, Chewy, and more! If you’re interested in a flexible internship that offers college credit and pay, while teaching you portable skills that bolster your resume, apply for a part-time internship with The Selling Factory today.