Here’s a scenario that is all too common among college students. It’s just one week before your junior year is about to end and you’re still scrambling to find a summer job. You’ve applied for various internships but they quickly filled up or you lacked the specific coursework that companies were looking for to qualify into their highly sought after internship programs.
One week later, you pack all of your belongings into the family car and head home for yet another summer working at a local restaurant or movie theater.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that a startup called internrocket is eliminating that problem for thousands of college students all throughout the United States.
internrocket CEO Mike Somers says the company’s education-focused platform is, “helping students understand what they are really passionate about from a very young age and then helping them foster their love of that passion so they can seek out a potential career”
“Companies interested in hiring our passionate users can issue one hour challenges, provide short-term but helpful micro-internships, and offer job shadowing to help guide a student’s decision about their future career. Ultimately the people who use our platform will accept an internship at a company they already know and trust and in a position they really want to pursue after graduating college,” Somers explains.
internrocket was founded about 4 years ago and has raised just north of $335,000. The company is currently working towards a large-scale rollout that includes school districts in its home state of Illinois.
8-Years-Old And On A Path Towards A Career?
“We don’t just want to find out what a young student is passionate about, we want them to experiment with that passion when their young so they get a better understanding of what will be expected of them and whether or not it’s something they really want to pursue” internrocket CMO James Kosur says.
By taking part in company issued challenges, participating in micro-internships, and eventually working in an internship, users gain a full understanding of what their future will look like in the career they are considering.
The company allows students as young as 8-years-old to join the platform. A company that chooses to follow that student’s progress over the next 10-15 years can gain a full understanding of their skills and passion for the job.
A Passionate Path And Observant Companies
Imagine if you will for a moment, a situation in which a young child finishes an hour of coding for a challenge, over the next 10 years they complete hundreds of hours of micro-internships and one-hour challenges.
That student then receives an offer to job shadow an employee at the company where they have always wanted to work. After a day or two of job shadowing they realize it’s the perfect position and they apply for the company’s internship program.
Over the past decade that very same company has endorsed the applicant for dozens of important job skills required to be a superstar employee and they immediately realize the student would be the perfect match.
The student is hired right away for the internship program and the company knows the internrocket user is passionate about the work to be completed. There’s no need to perform a formal interview and then cross their fingers that the new intern will actually come into the job and want to do the work.
An Incredibly High Rate Of Approval
“Our algorithm has done an amazing job of connecting potential future employees with micro-internships and full-time internships,” CTO Cody Sherman told SocialNewsDaily. “Nearly one-third (30%) of our users who have applied with a company have landed the job.”
The best part of the system is that it’s a turnkey operation. Companies who want to start an internship program or improve on their already established system, can sign up for internrocket and immediately start engaging with users who they are likely to find compelling and worthy of an internship.
The Gamification Of Social Enterprise
If you run a company that creates challenges, update profiles with skills, and even connect directly with the Khan Academies API to show third-party badges, you are bound to find that your system offers some competitive gamification.
As internrocket users complete challenges, micro-internships, and job shadowing, they receive badges and receive company-endorsed skills that showcase the progress they have made. As they complete any Khan Academy courses they are also able to display their Khan Academy badges directly inside their internrocket profile.
The more skills a user showcases, and the more badges they collect, the more likely they are to receive internship offers. It’s a great motivational tool that reminders users to keep pushing for more experience so they can stand out in the crowd.
Because their friends and followers see those accomplishments, it pushes other users on the social network to also complete challenges and earn new rewards that can be displayed on their profiles.
We asked the company’s CEO where internrocket is headed next. He pointed us to the company’s about page and this statement seems to sum up the platform perfectly.
“In any other investment people plan around up-to-date and accurate information. Our mission is to make the education economy more clear and obvious. Today, we partner with schools and businesses to create new transparent career investment opportunities for all ages so families can decide how to answer the key question: “What’s the best place to invest our next hour in our future career?”
It’s free to sign up for internrocket as a user and the company offers very affordable packages for small business owners all the way through to large-scale enterprise companies.
You can visit and learn more at: https://internrocket.com.
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