Intern in the USA

If you are repeating the J1 Career program with a new host organisation, a wait period of 90 days is required between internship programs.

If you are repeating the J1 Career program and returning to the same host organisation, a wait period of eight months (equivalent to two semesters) is required between internship programs. You may return to the same host organisation if additional training clearly demonstrates an advancement in skills/tasks from previous internship.

When approaching US employers, make them aware that you are looking for an internship that meets the below requirements. Also, lead with telling them that you will have sponsorship to intern in America via USIT - as the red tape and cost of sponsoring international interns can often be a barrier for US businesses looking to take on non-domestic intern.

• It must be connected to your field of study
• 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

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.

The below list isn’t exhaustive, so give the team a call before you start your search so that we can get a feel for what you’re interested in.

• 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.