Students are 'stacking' internships – but do employers really want that?

A resume came to my attention recently.

At first glance, it was impressive.  As a fresh graduate, this person appeared to have extensive experience, holding down six internships across three years.

The candidate had worked across agencies, startups and even a multinational corporation. 

But as I read his resume more closely, I noticed that each stint lasted between two and four weeks.

That gave me pause. Two weeks? What exactly does someone learn in 10 working days?

Long enough to understand the etiquette of not dozing off during meetings, I suppose, and certainly short enough to leave before anything gets difficult.

That's not to say internships lack value. They are when they're done right. 

It is a time when students get to step out of their classrooms and apply their skills in real-world situations. 

They get the opportunity to make mistakes, learn from them and, hopefully, see their work come to fruition in their internship organisation by the end of their stint.

But a growing number of students are "stacking" internships – cycling through multiple short stints across different companies, sometimes as brief as two weeks. 

It’s understandable, since young people are under pressure to gain job experience quickly in an increasingly competitive job market. 

As an employer, though, I’m much less impressed by the number of internships than by what sits beneath them.

INTERNSHIPS AS "INFINITY STONES"

The stacking of internships is starting to feel like a bizarro version of an arms race.

When one internship becomes the baseline, students feel the pressure to accumulate more just to remain competitive. 

Peers compare themselves as social media platforms such as LinkedIn amplify the pressure to have a stacked portfolio. Before long, the internship stops being a formative experience and becomes a collectible.

However, the value of an internship varies wildly depending on the duration, depth and responsibility. A three-month stint where a student owns a piece of work is not equivalent to a two-week attachment spent observing meetings and writing summaries.

I do understand the value in variety; each organisation provides a different learning experience based on its structure, the industry it belongs to and company culture, among other things. 

When I started in my career, I wanted to collect as many big agency names and companies on my resume as well, like how Marvel Comics villain Thanos collects Infinity Stones. 

But again – what could I possibly learn in just two weeks?

WHAT EMPLOYERS REALLY LOOK FOR

Most discerning hiring managers do not count internships. They are looking out for signals of capability:

• Did the candidate stay long enough to see something through?

• Did they take ownership of problems in their orbit, however small?

• Did they produce work that had consequences?

These are not questions that six short internships can easily answer. 

Exposure without depth is a shallow advantage. 

You may see how five different companies operate, but if you have never stayed long enough to contribute meaningfully, your understanding remains observational.

It is the difference between visiting a gym and training in one.

At some point, employers are less interested in what you have seen and are more interested in what you have done and learnt.

While students want to communicate ambition, curiosity and drive by stacking internships, it can have the opposite effect.

For employers, a long list of short internship stints can suggest restlessness, or worse, a lack of direction – especially if they had taken on different roles in different organisations. 

Ironically, the candidate with two well-chosen, longer internships often comes across as more deliberate and more credible than one with six fragmented experiences. And with clear examples of the work they achieved during their internships, they seem like the stronger candidate to employers like me.

WHAT SHOULD AN INTERNSHIP LOOK LIKE?

Internships remain one of the most valuable bridges between education and work, but the strategy matters. 

With a finite number of school breaks, it's easy to be swept up by the anxiety of other students taking up multiple internships at multiple firms.

If I were advising a student today, I would tell them that what matters more is what you do during the weeks you're in the office. 

Aim to leave behind something tangible: a campaign, a report, a piece of code, a solved problem. 

And if possible, volunteer for work that is slightly beyond your comfort zone.

To do so, it's important to stay long enough to see something through and understand how decisions are made in the office.

And when you do list your internships on your CV, focus less on where you were and more on what you did. 

Specificity beats quantity every time.

At my company, we typically have interns for at least three months. 

And we make sure they conclude their internship by running a project from start to finish. 

It is the culmination of the skills they have learnt here – a grand finale of sorts.

We’ve had interns run campaign pitches, produce a video content series and coordinate a social media live stream – all with actual clients. 

The feedback from former interns has been that their time here was a formative experience. And they were able to walk away with a sense of genuine accomplishment.

EMPLOYERS PLAY A ROLE

There is also a responsibility on the other side of the table.

If internships are becoming shorter and more transactional, it is partly because companies have made them so. 

When interns are treated as temporary observers rather than contributors, students naturally move on quickly, collecting experiences rather than investing in them.

Designing internships with real scope, even in small ways, can shift this dynamic.

Ultimately, the goal of an internship is not to fill a line on a resume. It is to build experience and capability.

That resume we looked at earlier did not fail because there were too many internships. It stalled because none of them felt substantial.

More is not always better. Sometimes, it is simply more. Six internships may look like drive, but the duration makes it look like drift.

What employers are really searching for is not volume, but evidence of judgment, of resilience, of work that meant something – and these are often built not by moving faster, but by staying longer.