Each year, millions of U.S. students take up intern positions to get hands-on practice in their field of choice. But each student’s experience can vary depending on the company they intern for. A new study found that Apple boasts a 100% recommendation rate from their interns.

Before entering the world of full-time work, just over a fifth of college students in the U.S. will start an internship each year. Lasting on average for 18.3 weeks, internships are a time-tested way for students to gain work experience, network with colleagues and improve their social and professional skills. 

But internships aren’t without controversy. Close to one in two interns in the U.S. aren’t paid, and as the National Association of Colleges and Employers highlights, unpaid interns receive fewer job offers than their paid counterparts and start on a lower salary when they do start a job. Moreover, women and people of color are less likely to be represented in paid internships. 

That being said, one company’s policies, pay, perks and benefits packages for interns will differ from another’s, and all of those factors can affect an intern’s experience and whether they’d encourage another intern to apply. So which U.S. companies are the most and least likely to be recommended to a friend by interns? Resume.io explored intern recommendations on Glassdoor to find out. 

Apple, the University of Southern California, Riot Games, and Deloitte all boast a 100% recommendation rate from interns on Glassdoor, with reviews highlighting factors like good pay, flexible hours, options, and friendly colleague. Here are some other key findings from the study:

  •  Tech firm Salesforce is the top U.S. company to intern for — nearly all (99.22%) of its interns would recommend it to a friend (the highest proportion of any company)
  • ●  Other top tech companies to intern for include Adobe (98.79% recommended), Autodesk (97.44% recommended) and eBay (97.35% recommended) 
  •  Conversely, finance company Aflac is the worst U.S. company to intern for — only 43.26% of its interns would recommend it to a friend (the lowest proportion of any company).
  •  Other finance companies leave a more positive impression on interns — none more so than Nationwide (97.20% recommended) and Charles Schwab (96.55% recommended.

For this research, Resume.io measured what percentage of interns said they would recommend the company they interned at to a friend via their Glassdoor review. 

The team started by compiling a seed list of the 10,000 most popular companies from Glassdoor that operate and/or hire in the United States. They filtered out companies with fewer than 1,000 employees and fewer than 500 reviews, resulting in a refined list of 4,404 companies. 

For each of these companies, the Resume.io team collected data on the number of reviews by interns who are based in the United States and whether or not they would recommend the company to a friend. They then conducted the same analysis on a city level for New York, Los Angeles and Chicago by focusing on reviews originating from those cities where the company operates and/ or employs interns who are based there. 

For a company to be ranked according to U.S.-wide intern reviews, a company needed to have a minimum of 100 Glassdoor reviews by interns based in the United States. For a company to be ranked according to city-wide intern reviews, a company needed to have a minimum of 40 Glassdoor reviews by interns who were based in Chicago or Los Angeles and a minimum of 50 reviews by interns who were based in New York. 

Resume.io separated tied rankings by ranking higher whichever company/s had the highest number of internship reviews. 



Article provided with permission from AppleWorld.Today