TWM Contributor: Jennifer Wolkiewicz Director of Administrative Services

Today’s working world presents its newest recruits with more than a few challenges:

  • Unlike the academic calendar with its built-in seasonal vacations, most companies operate year-round without extended shutdowns each quarter (goodbye spring, summer, fall, and winter breaks). However, you typically have the flexibility to request time-off whenever you need it throughout the year.
  • New (usually earlier) schedules, more structure, and other workplace norms can take some adjustment.
  • Communication between the generations can create some humorous moments when meanings are lost in translation and cultural references fail to register. No cap!

Enter the internship: a bridge into the methods, mechanisms, and mystery of the professional workplace. Pop culture tends to present interns as low-ranking makers of photocopies, coffee gophers, and errand runners. But in reality, internships offer a front-row seat to behind-the-scenes processes and opportunities to begin translating classroom concepts into real-world problem solving. It’s a chance to observe, contribute, and grow.

In a TWM internship, we can’t promise a summer jam-packed with only the most glamorous tasks in engineering and surveying, but you can expect more than the drudgery suffered by those TV or TikTok caricatures. Here’s the scoop from TWM’s perspective.

Sample a Career Field
Perhaps the No. 1 benefit of any internship is getting a feel for what it’s really like to work in a particular industry or at a certain organization. College builds the foundation, but no school setting can replicate the workplace experience quite like an internship. As an intern, you’ll work side-by-side with recent graduates in your field and gain guidance from leaders and mentors who hold positions you may one day aspire to as your career progresses. That first-hand exposure can be enough to confirm you’re on the right career path—or maybe that it’s not the right fit for you. Either way, finding that out sooner will give you more time to chart the best course for your passion and interests.

Get Experience before Experience
One of the greatest catch-22’s of the modern working world is that employers want job candidates to have experience before they can reasonably be expected to have experience! As an HR professional, I can confirm that of two candidates otherwise having equal qualifications, the one with a prior internship in our industry will have the edge. It signals savings to the employer because that person comes with some base knowledge that we would otherwise need to spend time training. Beyond helping you snag a second-year internship, that experience will be even more attractive to employers when you seek full-time employment upon graduation, with the potential to greatly improve your first-job prospects.

Acquire or Refine Soft Skills
Developing technical knowledge may be the focus of a STEM degree, but an internship can also help you learn and refine the soft skills everyone needs like communication, problem-solving, teamwork, adaptability, time management, organization, and emotional intelligence. Of course, these can be attained in just about any summer job but seeing them applied in your intended industry is even more valuable.

Build Relationships
Interactions with coworkers, and sometimes also vendors, clients, or the public, will be part of an internship. All are opportunities to get to know people. It’s never too early to start building your network of contacts, who can become indispensable friends, references, resources, even mentors, as you progress in your career. You’ll also meet peers in your field locally. The engineering and surveying industry can be a small world. Even if you and your intern coworkers don’t stay at the same company upon graduation, you may cross paths in your future careers.

Get That Bag and Course Credit
Some employers consider the experience of an internship itself to be sufficient pay. Others give only course credit. But at TWM, our interns are compensated competitively—and if your school supports it, we will help you earn course credit. Whether you need funds to pay for tuition, books, or incidentals, or just to have some extra money, rest assured that you won’t be working for free. In addition, TWM interns earn team bonuses if they’re actively working when we achieve a company milestone and pay a team bonus. Returning interns who maintain a certain GPA are also eligible for a tuition reimbursement perk through TWM.

Acquire Credit Toward ESOP Ownership
TWM is 100% employee-owned through our Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Each year every employee-owner receives a gift of stock from the company through a trust that holds those shares in their name. There’s no financial “buy-in” to become an owner. While most interns don’t meet the entry criteria with an internship alone, they do earn credit toward ESOP eligibility should they convert to a full-time position later, meaning they will be qualified for this wealth-building benefit sooner after starting a full-time position here. Similarly, interns accumulate time toward our 401k entry requirements, making them eligible for the company match sooner if they contribute to the 401k upon becoming a full-time employee.

Build a Possible Path to Future Full-Time Employment
TWM’s intern program is much like a “farm team” in baseball. We like to find prospects who are “A” players early and grow them into long-term members of our team, at which point they’ll be eligible for a host of additional benefits too numerous to detail here. It’s a win-win.

Have Fun
Doing high quality work and delivering it on time and on budget is obviously important for any consulting firm. At TWM, we also make time for opportunities to step away from the job site or the computer to build connection and camaraderie and have some fun. Our interns are invited to join in company-hosted events including our staff appreciation and ESOP parties, free lunches, friendly competitions, after-hours gatherings, and activities led by our young members group. We also host a lunch and team-building session just for our interns each summer.

With so many benefits to a TWM internship, we hope to make crossing that bridge to a full-time career as smooth as possible. You got this!

If you or someone you know is interested in career opportunities at TWM—whether an internship or other position—, please visit https://careers.twm-inc.com/ to view our job listings and apply today. If you don’t see a position fitting your qualifications, click the link at the top of the page to submit your information for future opportunities.

Read more about TWM’s career benefits.