Best Internships in Boston
The internship’s place in culture is heavily debated and often lampooned—for proof, see the 2013 Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson comedy vehicle, “The Internship” or last year’s “The Intern” starring Robert DeNiro and Anne Hathaway. Or take Charlotte, North Carolina songwriter Sean Padilla’s project The Cocker Spaniels, whose lyrics to “The Overeducated Underclass” ponder the catch-22 of indebted post-graduates working pro bono.
Musings about free labor and student loan debt aside, the right internship can be a valuable opportunity to learn new skills and get acquainted with a company’s culture. Vault.com recently published its 2016 50 Best Internships list and Glassdoor released its 2016 Best Places to Work list.
With Boston’s reputation emerging as a Silicon Valley of the East, according to Inc. Magazine, it’s clear why Beantown companies featured prominently on both lists. Here are 5 Boston companies with internships that offer the most bang for your buck.
Bain & Company is a global management consulting firm that helps some of the world’s largest and most innovative companies overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Among its many distinguished current and former associates, Bain & Co. counts two Harvard Business School graduates: Managing Director Joshua Bekenstein (Harvard MBA ’84) and Managing Partner (and Boston Celtics co-owner) Stephen Pagliuca (Harvard MBA ’82).
According to Bain & Co’s Vault.com profile, many of the company’s offices “offer summer internship programs for top-performing undergraduate and MBA students.” Training for Summer Associate interns begins at the company’s “immersive off-site program on Cape Cod.” For two and a half months, interns can join forces with a legitimate Bain case team so they can garner hands-on experience in every facet of a project, “from board meetings to team meetings,” according to the profile.
Founded in 1963, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm whose expertise, according to its Vault.com profile, encompasses: “corporate development, global advantage (globalization), information technology, marketing & sales, organization, operations, strategy, social impact; and industry practices such as consumer & retail, energy, financial institutions, health care, industrial goods, insurance, public sector and technology, media & telecommunications.”
In the Boston office, Senior Partner, Managing Director, and Global Leader of BCG’s Health Care Practice Adam Farber is a Wharton alum; Senior Partner, Managing Director, and Global Leader of BCG’s Social Impact Practice Wendy Woods is an alum of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Chief Financial Officer Debbie Simpson comes from MIT Sloan.
BCG’s summer internship program is an immersive experience where interns “assume responsibilities like those of new permanent consulting staff and to serve as full members of case teams.”
PwC (a.k.a. PricewaterhouseCoopers) is a professional services network, a highly respected accounting firm, and the 6th-largest privately owned organization in the U.S., according to Forbes. The PwC site describes the company’s focus on “audit and assurance, tax and consulting services” with the intention to “help resolve complex issues and identify opportunities.”
PwC offers two internship options: Advance, which emphasizes MBAs with specific professional goals, and the introductory Start, which “provides students the opportunity to learn more about our [PwC] firm while further developing the skills necessary for success in the business world.” According to its Vault.com profile, “Interns will practice our commitment to client service by executing responsibilities and gaining insight into the professional services sector. Interns engage in dialogue with a dedicated coaching team focused on guiding them through the internship, providing in the moment feedback and developing them into a PwC Professional.”
HubSpot is a leading inbound marketing and sales platform—the third largest marketing automation vendor by market share, according to Capterra. According to its Glassdoor profile, HubSpot’s software, services, and support include “social media publishing and monitoring, blogging, SEO, website content management, email marketing, marketing automation, and reporting and analytics, all in one integrated platform.” HubSpot ranks #1 in customer satisfaction by VentureBeat and G2Crowd and has repeatedly been named one of the Best Medium-Sized Companies to Work in Boston by the Boston Business Journal.
HubSpot’s management is packed to the gills with MBA graduates: CEO Brian Halligan, Chief Revenue Officer Mark Roberge, and VP of Culture and Experience Katie Burke are all MIT Sloan alumni. COO & President JD Sherman hails from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and VP of Operations Alison Elworthy is a graduate of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.
According to its site, HubSpot has intern programs during the Spring, Summer and Fall semesters, as well as the co-op seasons. Each program is built to help interns learn the marketing, business, and coding skills they need to execute quickly, as well as have fun and work alongside each other.
Akamai is a leading Content Delivery Network (CDN) and cloud services provider that delivers up to 30% of all Web traffic in any given moment. Its clients include Apple, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, ESPN, MTV Networks, Yahoo, and healthcare.gov. According to its Glassdoor profile, Akamai’s “advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere.” Akamai makes the Internet “fast, reliable, and secure for its customers” with over 200,000 servers across 110 countries.
Akamai’s President of Products & Development Rick McConnell graduated with an MBA from Stanford, while Executive VP & CFO Jim Benson is an alumnus of Clark’s MBA program.
According to its site, Akamai offers 10-12 week summer internships during which interns will develop partnerships with “team members, mentors, and managers”; “gain real-world experience”; “participate in weekly lunch-and-learn development sessions”; and “attend a variety of social networking events.”
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
