Been out of the grid for quite a while and feeling rusty with your skills? No worries. You can re-learn or gain new skills to get back to the workforce by participating in a mid-career internship programs that some big companies are offering.
A return internship, also dubbed as "returnship," aims to help workers who have been out of the workforce for a period to get the skills they need to get back to the hiring door. On the companies' side, the internship programs help them evaluate their potential recruits through actual work that would aid them when deciding on whether to hire them permanently.
Per Business Insider, Goldman Sachs is one of the first companies to offer a mid-career internship program back in 2008. Since then, many other companies have followed suit, including Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, MetLife, IBM, and General Motors.
Women are mostly the ones affected by being out of the workforce for a spell, mainly due to childcare and other family responsibilities. Other reasons include health issues and pursuing personal interests. Because they were off the grid for a time, they are often penalized in terms of pay penalties or missed promotion opportunities, as reported by The Atlantic. But the programs are also open to men who had to take an extended time away from work.
With that, the return internship is a great help for both women and men to get back to full-time work. In addition, they also get to earn as these internships are paid. Goldman Sachs, for instance, offers a 10-week paid program while data company Return Path has a 20-week paid internship. IBM has a 12-week paid internship called "Tech Reentry" and General Motors also launched a 12-week program called "Take-2 Career." About 50 to 90% of those who participated in the mid-career internships from the financial sector were hired full time, according to International Business Times.
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