How to Pick Your Internship

Two summers ago, Lauren Grunstein landed exactly the kind of internship she wanted: doing public relations for a fashion designer. What the College of Communication freshman hadn’t counted on were the long hours and menial tasks, like running errands and fetching coffee.

Her friend Stephanie Gurtman had the opposite experience. She was anxious about her internship at an advertising agency. Her boss was fired before Gurtman started, and for a while, the firm wasn’t sure if she’d be needed. “I was extremely nervous, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to be getting myself into,” she recalls. But Gurtman loved the job. “I was sent on commercial shoots, wrote press releases, and went to important meetings.”

Gurtman (COM’10) and Grunstein (COM’10) realized that their summers could have been different if they had been able to speak to other students who had interned for the companies. “We wondered why there wasn’t a resource for students to talk to other interns,” says Gurtman.

So, the two public relations majors created that resource: InternshipRatings.com, a Web site that allows students to rate, compare, and research internships.

Users can search by industry, region, or company, such as ABC News or Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. They can also write reviews of their internships.

BU Today caught up with Gurtman and Grunstein to talk more about InternshipRatings.com and about their advice for students looking to find internships. If their successful Web site keeps thriving, they may even need to hire their own interns.

BU Today: How has InternshipRatings.com performed?
Stephanie Gurtman: It’s doing very well. We currently have over 200 companies rated, have almost 300 ratings of those companies, and have surpassed 400 users. For a site that’s only been live less than a year, it’s doing well. We’ve had great feedback from students and companies, so we’re just working to get ratings on the site so that it can become a substantial resource. Everyone’s been really supportive, and we’re excited about the site taking off.

Does maintaining the Web site keep you busy?
Lauren Grunstein: This summer, it was definitely a 9-to-5 job. We’re always on our BlackBerrys, e-mailing and talking to someone. We work really hard at forming relationships with companies right now, because they’ve been our greatest supporters. Boston is really a great city to be an entrepreneur in.

We’re adding different components to the site in the next few weeks that should allow users to search better. We want to give our users more options to communicate with each other and the tools and resources they have been asking for. Check out the site’s blog, called "Take Note," where industry experts give advice.

What was the most difficult part of starting your own Web site?
Gurtman: The business part, definitely, not to mention dealing with the Web firms. Lauren and I are COM students, with no business experience, so we had a difficult time with contracts, writing up the business plan, drawing up a partnership agreement, figuring out the legality behind the ratings, stuff like that. The funny thing is that looking back on it, that part was easy compared with all that we’ve been doing this summer. Running your own business, you learn more than you would in any class, because you’re actually doing the work.

Have you gotten help or advice for starting your site?
Grunstein: We could not have done it without the professors in COM. We have a very close relationship with Stephen Quigley, an associate professor of public relations. He’s helped us since day one. He was the first professor we told when we had the idea for the Web site, and he’s been a mentor. He’s helped us with promotional ideas, press releases, and events, referred us to other professors, and told us about different networking groups in Boston that we should join. We’ve also worked with COM’s John Hall, Brent Skinner, and Jo O’Connor.

What are your goals for the Web site?
Grunstein: We aim to have as many ratings as possible so the site can really help students know what it’s like to work at a company. We created the site so that students can go into these big companies, or even smaller companies, and have that experience. You don’t want to be stuck getting coffee all day. There are so many great companies out there that really strive to educate their interns about how to be great employees, and that’s really the goal for our site.

Gurtman: It’s really important for students to go on the site and rate their internships. The more people who contribute to the site, the better a resource it will become. Students can find companies with great internship programs, and they can see what other people are saying about their dream company.

Do you have any advice for people thinking of starting their own Web site or company?
Gurtman: First, write a business plan. Check out the competition in the field, see if it’s an easy field to enter, and get to know your competition, their strengths and weaknesses. Also, talk to other students and see if they would even be interested in your product, because if your demographic is going to be students and they don’t want your product, then it’s pointless to push ahead with that idea. Talk to professors at school, because they’ve worked in the industry, they have great contacts, and some of them know what to do and what not to do when starting a business. Honestly, if it weren’t for our COM professors, our Web site would not be where it is today.

To rate your internship or to read what others have to say about their internships, visit InternshipRatings.com.

Amy Laskowski can be reached at amlaskow@bu.edu.