How an Internship should be Structured

I was tasked with reviewing 160 applications last week for an internship with the Department. These opportunities are targeted towards rising sophomores with an expected graduation of May, 2012. within the panel we had some disagreement about how the internship should be structured.

A colleague of mine was of the opinion that the student should have a deep dive into one or two specific fields like Enterprise Architecture or IT Security. I was on the opposite side, arguing that the internship should provide each student with some visibility into as many of the IT disciplines that we can.

Neither position is right or wrong. Both are valuable to the student. But strategically the executive sponsors of this internship should have identified more of the vision for the program. They should have identified either a broad and shallow or narrow and deep exploration of government IT work. From a panel perspective, it could have made a difference for a couple of applicants if we were looking for a generalist versus focused knowledge of a specific area.