Job Shadowing vs. Internship: Which is Right for You?

As a high school student, feeling unsure about your future after graduation is normal. The multitude of career options and educational paths can be overwhelming. Internships and job shadowing offer a valuable way to explore careers, gain real-world experience, and make more confident decisions about your future. They are powerful tools for self-discovery and preparation, especially for students exploring college majors, trade schools, or direct entry into the workforce.

Understanding Internships and Job Shadowing

An internship is a short-term work experience that allows students to gain hands-on training in a specific field, and build your resume. Job shadowing, on the other hand, involves spending a day (or several) observing a professional in their day-to-day work.

In an internship, students have a manager, and they are responsible for producing assigned work. For students looking for a more in-depth experience with the possibility of earning money, they may want to consider an internship. The student shadowing the employee isn’t responsible for producing any work. They instead are there to listen, observe, and ask questions about the specific job role and the career path in general.

Job shadowing is typically a one-day experience and is unpaid. In contrast, high school internships are a temporary, part-time work experience that may be paid or unpaid. During an internship, you’ll receive training, and you’ll have directives to follow that will shape the tasks you perform during your shift.

Key Benefits of Internships and Job Shadowing

Both internships and job shadowing provide numerous benefits for high school students.

Read also: High School Career Options

1. Career Exploration and Self-Discovery

Trying out different jobs before graduating gives you insight into what you enjoy and what you don’t. You might discover a passion for marketing, healthcare, engineering, welding, or graphic design. As one recent high school intern shared, “I thought I wanted to be a teacher, but after shadowing in a classroom, I realized I’m more interested in education policy.”

Job shadowing can take away some of those uncertainties. For example, a student may think they want to go into nursing, but after shadowing a nurse for a day, they may realize they don’t really like how much paperwork nurses have to do. The purpose of job shadowing is to learn about what it’s really like to work in that job.

2. Skill Development

Internships and job shadowing allow you to develop soft skills employers and colleges value. Even if you’ve never had a job before, this kind of experience gives you something concrete to put on your resume and talk about in interviews.

By completing one or more internships during high school, you will:

Gain work experience to inform your career choices
Learn how to conduct yourself in a professional manner and practice communicating effectively with others in the workplace
Strengthen your teamwork and collaboration skills

Essentially, a high school internship serves as a test drive for your future career choices.

3. Educational and Career Path Clarity

Internships and shadowing help you understand the education or training you’ll need. You may find out that a four-year degree isn’t necessary for your dream job-or that a specific college program is the perfect fit.

4. Networking Opportunities

Internships and shadowing allow you to meet people already doing the work you’re interested in. These connections can provide guidance, advice, and even letters of recommendation for future opportunities. Job shadowing is a great way for students to make connections that could help them down the road.

Completing one or more job shadowing experiences is an effective way to gain a general introduction to what you can expect from the world of work after college. It also enables you to:

Begin to develop a professional network
Potentially forge a mentor-mentee relationship

5. Enhanced College Applications

Admissions officers and hiring managers love seeing initiative. Internships and job shadowing demonstrate that you are serious about your goals and willing to step outside the classroom to grow. You can-and definitely should-put job shadowing and high school internships on your college applications. College admissions staff members do look beyond grades when evaluating student applications. In particular, they like to see that students are passionate about something and are eager to do more than the bare minimum.

How to Find Opportunities

1. Leverage Existing Resources

Your high school may already have connections with companies or organizations that regularly host student interns. Don’t be afraid to ask your counselor or a favorite teacher for help. The student’s guidance counselor can help them find appropriate job shadow opportunities.

Read also: Your Guide to Nursing Internships

2. Reach Out to Local Organizations

Reach out to small businesses, community organizations, hospitals, schools, or local government offices. Many are open to hosting students for short-term internships or shadowing days-especially if you show enthusiasm and interest.

3. Networking

Students already have a network of working adults in their lives. These could be family members, neighbors, a friend’s parents, or people they know through extracurricular activities or part-time jobs.

4. Cold Calls

Students who are interested in specific industries but don’t have a contact there can call businesses directly.

5. Online Search

As with most things in life, finding internships in high school can begin with Google. When searching these sites, it can be helpful to type in “high school” to filter out internships aimed at recent college graduates.

You could also try online community boards. See if your town has a digital job board or community notice board (try searching NextDoor and/or your town’s chamber of commerce and local business associations). If any organizations are offering internships, you might contact them to ask if they’d be willing to host you for a job shadow.

6. National Organizations

Just to name a few, here are some national organizations that offer internships to high school students:

NASA
National Human Genome Research Institute
Smithsonian
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Bank of America

Example Outreach

Introduce yourself, explain your interest in the field, and ask if they’d be open to an intern or allowing you to shadow someone for a day or two.

Example:

Hello, my name is Maya and I’m a high school junior interested in graphic design. I admire your work and would love to learn more about the industry. Would you be open to allowing me to shadow someone on your team for a day or offering advice on how to get started in this field?

Preparing for Your Experience

Although job shadowing and high school internships aren’t the same experience, you’ll prepare for them in similar ways. Use the following tips:

Research the organization thoroughly beforehand. You should know its overall mission and focus and its various services or products.
Research the job role (for a job shadow, the job role of the person you’re shadowing) and the department so that you have a basic understanding of what to expect before you arrive.
Develop a list of relevant questions you’re curious about. Ask questions! This is the perfect opportunity to ask questions about the role and industry.
Dress appropriately for an office environment.
Do a test commute to the office so that you know how long it takes you. Plan to arrive a little early.

As the big day approaches, try to relax! You might feel a few butterflies in your stomach, especially if it’s your first time shadowing or interning. Take some deep breaths and try to get enough sleep the night before your first day.

Making the Most of Your Time

High school internships are usually fairly brief, and job shadowing experiences are even shorter. Optimize your time at the organization and make a good impression by following these tips:

Keep your phone silenced during a job shadow. During an internship, resist the urge to browse social media or make personal calls during work hours.
Bring a notepad. Write down notes and questions as they occur to you. If it’s an internship, make a note of what your usual daily tasks are so that you can write about them in a college application.
Maintain a positive attitude and be enthusiastic about the job. Remember that your goal-for either type of experience-is to learn as much as possible while you’re there.
Introduce yourself to other people, make eye contact, and shake hands. Students should know something about the industry and organization before showing up on job shadow day. Introduce themselves to other people they meet throughout the day.
Be respectful of people’s time. If you’re doing an internship, you’ll definitely need to ask questions as needed to ensure you perform a task correctly. At a job shadow, however, it’s best to ask questions when there is a lull in activity.

What to Do After Your Experience

You’ve done the prep work, you’ve followed the tips for getting the most out of the experience, your final day at the office is over, and now you’re done! Right? Well, not quite. After completing a high school internship or job shadowing experience, there are still a few details to wrap up.

First, take some time to reflect on the experience. What did you enjoy? What seemed to be not quite so appealing about the job field? Every career will have upsides and downsides; do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? Can you see yourself doing this sort of work after college?

Next, send thank you notes within a day or two of completing the experience. If you shadowed multiple people at one organization, you’ll need to send thank you notes to each of them. If you were an intern, send thank you notes to your supervisor, the hiring manager, and anyone else with whom you spent a great deal of time. Try to personalize the notes by mentioning a few things you learned during your time there.

If possible, try to nurture the professional connections you developed-especially if you did an internship rather than a brief job shadow. Try to reach out to them now and then, particularly if you decide to enter that field.

Unpaid Internships: Are They Worth It?

While job shadowing experiences are always unpaid, internships may be paid or unpaid. Whether you decide to accept an unpaid internship is entirely your decision; consider talking to your parents, legal guardians, or school counselor for personalized advice.

Accepting an unpaid internship in high school is more doable than if you were to make the same move right out of college when you’ve got bills and student loans to pay. At this point in your life, it’s unlikely that you’re responsible for making financial contributions to your household. That said, it might not seem fair to do work that you aren’t being paid for.

However, bear in mind that the value of an internship goes well beyond a paycheck. You’ll get:

A valuable addition to your college applications and resume
Professional connections
The potential for letters of reference
Job training and experience
An inside look at working in a particular field, which can shape your career decisions

In other words, you’ll be getting something even with an unpaid internship.

Job Shadowing Duration

In most cases, job shadowing lasts a few hours or one full workday. If you’re planning to shadow someone during the school year, you’d probably be best served by shadowing for a couple of hours after school so that you don’t miss class. Job shadowing during school vacations offers more flexibility. You could arrange a job shadow for an entire day or possibly even a few days. Less commonly, some job shadowing experiences last a week or two.

Other Ways to Gain Experience

There are many ways to gain experience, make business connections, and even make money while you study.

Informational Interviews: Students can often arrange a “reverse interview” with employers to help determine with a job or company is a good fit for them.
Career Fairs: A career fair or job fair is an event in which multiple employers and recruiters gather in one location to provide information about their company or organization to potential workers.
Field Trips / Worksite Visits: Field Trips or worksite tours are a great opportunity for students to explore new career paths by visiting worksite locations.
Mentoring: Mentoring takes place between individuals with lesser experience, most often a younger person (i.e., mentees) and typically an older and/or more experienced person, (i.e., mentors) who serves in a non-professional helping role to provide relationship-based support to benefit one or more areas of the mentee’s development.
Mock Interviews: A mock or practice interview is a simulation of an actual job interview. It provides the jobseeker or student with an opportunity to prepare for an interview and receive feedback for way to improve.
Service Learning: Service learning is a teaching and learning strategy that mixes meaningful community service with instruction and reflection.
Apprenticeships: Apprentices in North Carolina are training in more than a thousand occupations, in traditional fields as well as newer ones.
Youth Apprenticeship: A registered youth apprenticeship is an industry-driven education and career-training program based on recognized industry standards.
Co-Ops: Cooperative education or a co-op allows students to preview their career path to ensure they are heading in the right direction and avoiding costly mistakes.
On-the- Job-Training (OJT): On-the-Job-Training is defined as training of a new or newly promoted employee while he or she is doing the job he or she was hired to perform.

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