Professional internships in America

To protect you as an intern and ensure that your internship benefits your professional development, your placement must meet criteria outlined by the US Department of State. When approaching US employers, make them aware that any international internship offer must meet the below requirements:

• It must be a training position and not a job
• It must be full-time – a minimum of 32 hours a week
• It must be office based, not remote
• It mustn’t involve more than 10% clerical or basic work, or include unskilled labour
• It must benefit your career and have a clear training plan
• It must be doing work that is additional to the employer’s normal staffing requirements
• Unpaid internships are allowed for up to six months only
• There must be a minimum of five full-time employees to every intern at that location
• A site visit may be required to assess your future employer’s workplace. See the next FAQ for more

For 'Own Placement' your overall cost will depend on the length of your internship – as this determines how long we (JENZA + IENA – our US visa sponsor) need to provide the visa sponsorship and support for your stay in the USA.

On this type of J-1 intern visa, you have a 30-day grace period either side of your internship placement where you can travel in the USA.

This is automatically included in your sponsorship and medical insurance policy. Therefore, you will only pay for the cost of your actual internship. For example, if your internship is for 6 months, you can stay in the US and be covered by the included medical insurance we provide for up to 8 months.

For 'Hospitality Placement' there is one set cost – irrespective of the duration of your placement.

Own Placement

Such is the breadth of degree subjects and US industries and roles that might align with individual's career goals, it's not currently possible for us to secure a pre-placement for degree subjects outside of the hospitality world. It is your responsibility to find your own placement, however, our team are here to assist you. We’ll give you advice on where previous applicants doing your degree have interned, provide tips on how to lay out your US resume, and can recommend placement partners you can reach out to. You’ll also have all the free resources on our Intern Hub – which is full of info to help you search and apply for international internships.

Hospitality Placement

For those with a hospitality related degree, we work with a US partner to place you in an internship before you go. Scroll up to our 'Internships' section for the type of degrees, roles and employers that they can support you with. Once you have your position secured, we then take over with the vetting, sponsorship, legal paperwork and everything else that's required to intern in the USA.

On this visa, there are some fields that are restricted. In general, you can’t have patient or person contact. For example, you can intern in medical research or nutrition development, but you can't work as a doctor or PT seeing patients or clients.

• Education You can’t work as a teacher or teaching assistant, but you can work in curriculum development, lesson planning and more.
• Oenology and Viticulture You can’t do fruit picking, vine and harvest work, but you can do fermentation management, distribution and more.
• Construction You can’t operate heavy machinery or intern as part of a work crew, but you can do project management, drafting and more.
• Healthcare and veterinary You can’t do clinical care or administer medication or procedures, but you can do observation-based internships.
• Hospitality Typically, hotels must be rated 4-star or higher and have broad operations to facilitate a comprehensive training in the hospitality field. For culinary training, restaurants must be a fine dining establishment in order to qualify.
• Social services You can’t work directly with patients, but you can do social work and policy (unpublished), community outreach and more.
• Sports and nutrition You can’t do coaching, physical therapy or personal training, but you can do Sports Medicine business management, food product development and more.
• Retail Internships must be management-focused, and typically include training in areas such as human resources practices, accounting, staffing practices, buying, merchandising and more.
• Sales You cannot do commission sales, sales quotas as part of evaluations and/or compensation, cold calls and direct sales, independent representation of host organisation on sales calls. But you can do forecasting, budgeting, sales analysis, presentation creation, client presentations under supervision, learning how to pitch sales, client management, learning sales management tools and attending client meetings.

This list is not exhaustive, so if your industry or planned internship falls under one of these categories - please give us a call and we can advise.