2009 Internships

Not sure about that. This is by all accounts, going to be a gradual recovery. So I don't expect companies to be adding substantially to their payroll anytime soon.

I expect the Class of 2011 internship recruiting to be slightly better than this year.

I actually think this will be a sharper recovery than a lot of people are expecting. I read a pretty convincing article talking about the fact that virtually all of the "consensus economists" were not even in the working world yet during the early 80s recession. The only recessions they've known were the early 90s and 2000s recessions which had gradual recoveries because they were extremely shallow recessions. Historically, all sharp recessions have been followed by sharp recoveries. This is classic behavioral finance stuff where economists are having their forcasts tainted by their experiences during recent history.

I think the OP was talking about internships for the class of 2012. Regardless of how shallow or sharp the recovery is, the job market should be in much better shape 2 years from now.

I should have phrased the post differently. Will there be less people applying this year because of the lack of interships for the class of 2010 (i.e. internships this year and graduating next year)? It definitiely has me thinking twice about applying and my current job seems appealing given the fact that many are having a dificult time finding any internhip at all for this summer.

The brutal truth of recruiting here at Kellogg from what I have seen is internationals have a much harder time. Specifically Asian and Indians...it seems there are more options in their home area for people from Europe, Canada, and places like Brazil. Central/South Americans and Africans also have the advantage of being under represented. I am sure numbers are below where they are typically, but my sense is that people with permanent work authorization (ie Americans) are in far better shape.

If you are reasonably focused, and work at it then your chances of success are pretty good. Most of my friends who dont face the visa issue, who dont have anything either were way too focused, ie applied to M/B/B and thats it, or were unfocused and really didnt know what they wanted so couldnt really get that passion across or didnt pick the right companies to apply to. Then of course there are the unlucky ones but I think they are a minority compared to people who didnt have good recruiting strategies...some of those unlucky ones were very young which eliminated them from lots of companies who have minimum years of work experience. You need to play to your strengths, convincing a recruiter is easier if you can directly relate it to your previous experiences and have some backups.

How bad is it if you did not have an internship during the summer? Doesn't it kill your job prospects after graduation?

Tarmac, it really depends on what you want to do after school. If your career switch is not too far off (say you want to go from B2B tech Product manager to B2C or product marketing), then you should have a good chance of trying again for full time, even without a summer internship. But for most of us, we're doing career switches such that anything in the right direction (i.e. giving you useful experience that can be leveraged for the full time job) will be good for the summer.

Therefore, my short answer is that I think you should have something in the summer that you can talk about in the fall during full time recruiting. It doesn't have to be a paid internship, as many people here at Haas look for lowly paid or unpaid internships with small startup companies that work in their field (whether it be energy, tech, media, finance, or whatever). Having the 10-12 week experience in the summer, even if it's unpaid, will help strengthen your resume that much more when you have to face recruiters again later in the year.

Somewhat off topic, but how have the part timers at Berkeley done as far as career switching after finishing the 3 year stint? I imagine most don't ever do an internship, they just keep the same job as when they started the program.

Unfortunately that's something I don't know. Most do not do an internship and stay at their own jobs, like you said. Only a few quit their jobs to look for an internship, but I doubt there will be a lot of those this year with the economy being so bad.

When they do an internship, is it typically the summer after 2 years of being in the program, and for the 3rd year the person either doesn't work, or works part time or something?