CAPD is excited to share details about micro-internships for MIT undergraduate and graduate students. This new offering replaces the MIT Alumni Association Externship Program and provides a broader set of opportunities for students to explore career paths, gain work experience, and build their network. CAPD would appreciate your help in sharing information about this initiative with students and your employer contacts.

Micro-internships are 2-4 week projects or internships where students can collaborate with hosts on projects that provide a learning opportunity and meet a workplace need. While a majority of micro-internships will be available over IAP, some employers are posting opportunities for fall 2020. For the 2020-2021 academic year, CAPD is strongly encouraging hosts to offer remote opportunities.

Since many of you are familiar with the former Externship Program, in which students were matched with alumni hosts for an IAP externship, we outline key differences as well as benefits of micro-internships below:

• Open to all employers. While alumni may host some of the micro-internships, any employer can offer these opportunities.
• No formal match process. Instead, the process is similar to finding and applying for an internship on Handshake.
• Mentor-Mentee relationship remains central to the experience. While there is no matching process, students and hosts are encouraged to foster this valuable connection. Hosts will include some alumni.
• Flexible application timeline. Students can apply to micro-internships on a rolling basis as new micro-internship postings become available in Handshake.
• All opportunities on Handshake. Students can leverage a streamlined process to search for and apply to micro-internships, internships, and full-time job opportunities.

Alumni and employers have been invited to post micro-internships over fall 2020 and IAP 2021. In addition, former Externship hosts have been invited to post micro-internships; micro-internships with alumni hosts will be labeled accordingly.

Please encourage students to consider a micro-internship and direct interested alumni and employers to these posting instructions.  Contact Tavi Sookhoo, Career Development Specialist at tsookhoo@mit.edu with any additional questions.

— Tavi Sookhoo, CAPD