Page 88 - Marky Stein - Fearless Career Change_ The Fast Track to Success in a New Field (2004)

Fearless Career Change

• Fashion design • Marine biology
• Film and television • Mental health services
production • Museums

• Geriatrics • Printing
• High technology • Publishing
• Manufacturing • Theater arts

The most valuable resource I can recommend on internship is
Mark Oldman’s book Best 109 Internships, in which he lists scores of
companies from the nonprofit, profit, and government sectors.*
The list includes such Fortune 500 giants as Hewlett-Packard,
Procter and Gamble, and Microsoft as well as unexpected offerings
such as MTV, NASA, the CIA, American Conservatory Theater, and
even Rolling Stone magazine.
The author also indicates that his research shows that 80 per-
cent of companies that hire interns also pay them well, even as much
as $800 per week.

There are ways to maximize the potential of your
internship to lead you right into a job, which
we’ll discuss in Chapter 5.

Strategy 5. Short-Term Education

Short-term education, as I define it, is completing a prescribed pro-
gram of training in a formal or semiformal setting (such as a
school, college, or professional organization) that lasts for 90
days or less.
One of my clients, Carol, made the dive from administrative
assistant to midwife assistant in only a few weeks using the strategy
of short-term education. Before she received her training, she per-
formed what I call labor market readiness research. She called 10
potential employers—midwives, birthing centers, obstetricians—

*Mark Oldman, with Samer Hamdeh, The Best 109 Internships, 9th ed., Princeton
Review/Random House, New York, 2003.

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