How to Get Work Experience in College

In an article titled,'Campus Jobs are Real Jobs Too posted at TheHBCUCareerCenter.com recently, HBCU students were encouraged to look for meaningful work experiences on their own college campuses.

Steven Smith, host of the Steven A. Smith Show on Fox Sports Radio Network and Journalism graduate from Winston-Salem State University, shared some career insights with HBCU students at the recent annual HBCU Newspaper Conference & Job Fair at Morgan State University. Smith said that when he graduated from a non-accredited Journalism program at Winston-Salem State University, he was "at a considerable disadvantage" when compared with students from other colleges with stronger, accredited journalism programs.

To compensate Smith said he looked for opportunities to develop his professional skills. Smith applied for internships that developed his skills as a journalist outside of the classroom. One such internship program was the Met-Pro Internship Program, a unique diversity program designed to help beginning journalists launch careers in Chicago Tribune newsrooms. When Smith was chosen to be a part of the elite Met-Pro Internship Program, he beat out other candidates from large journalism schools because of his experience. "I was one of 24 finalists selected, and while they had these grades from prestigious universities, I had 250 published clips -- I had valid evidence for what I could do."

The HBCU Newspaper Conference brought together HBCU students involved on their campuses with the publication and distribution of their college newspapers. Working at the college level, these future journalists, writers, editors and publishers were problem solving real workplace and business issues from budgeting to staffing to finding the right marketing mix that would increase readership and advertising dollars and get their publications into the most hands.

To increase competitiveness in the job market, HBCU students should be looking around their own college campuses for real work experiences and applying for internship programs.