BusinessWeek.com looks at unmet expectations in summer internships:

The largest areas of disappointment for “decliners” were related to job content and manager behavior, Scott says. The study’s conclusion is that interns’ assignment managers are the “deal makers/breakers” in whether a student will accept a full-time job, “because they themselves model ‘what’s it’s really like’ to work for the company.”

Conversations with recent student interns reinforce the idea that they come into interships with high expectations. “I want to feel worthy, that I’m not just an intern. I want to show what I can do, what I’ve learned over the past four years,” says Chelsea Culver, a senior at the University of Washington Business School and an intern at H2 Marketing in Seattle. (For more students’ views of internship expectations and reality, see the slide show.)

Categories: Business and Economics, Careers, Education, Matching Mechanisms