Connecticut College senior Paul Dryden has known for years that he'd have lots of competition for an entry-level promotions job in New York's music industry. So in a bid to get an edge last summer, he invented a job for himself.

The job, as an intern in Universal Music's Buenos Aires office, had never existed before Dryden proposed it. Yet because he was willing to work without pay, he got his foot in the door and was soon translating interviews with American rock stars for his boss, who didn't speak English.

"In the U.S., I've done a lot of internships where interns do all the busywork - copying, stapling, the boring stuff," Dryden says. "But in this position (in Argentina), I felt very valuable to the company."

International internships have been around since the 1950s, but they've become much more popular lately. Over the past three years, colleges have on average seen a 6% increase in the number of students doing international internships, according to a 39-college survey in March by the National Society for Experiential Education, an association of campus internship coordinators. And the Institute for the International Education of Students says 25% of its 5,000 annual study-abroad participants now do an internship component, up from 17% in the 1980s and 21% in the 1990s.

National data aren't available on the total number of students doing internships overseas, but career-planning experts say such experience is an increasingly popular way to get "résumé radiance." Because 84% of college students say they'll do at least one internship before graduating, many now aim to distinguish themselves with experience tailored to a global economy.

"It's an important capstone to one's international studies to actually log some time in a particular country, because then, once you become a full-time employee, you'll get known as a person with international experience," says Mark Oldman, co-founder of career information site Vault.com.

Still, working overseas can pose some challenges. Foreign organizations don't always have meaningful work to offer, especially for students with limited language skills, says Stephanie Barnes, an internship coordinator in Cuernavaca, Mexico, for Augsburg College's Center for Global Education. She says students also need to brace for a work environment shaped by a local culture that may, for instance, accept that bosses are allowed to flirt with staffers or that teachers are allowed to discipline students by hitting them.

"This is not the United States. This is Mexico," Barnes says. "As a social worker, coming from the States, where (hitting children) is totally not allowed, what do you do when you're working in another culture and that's not the rule here? It's those types of things that are good lessons for the students."

Arranging internships abroad also can be a challenge. Not all countries are familiar with the concept of working part-time or short-term to gain experience in a certain field. But with help from career-planning offices and study-abroad program operators, students are finding opportunities in schools and orphanages, where teaching English is valued. In the for-profit sector, multinational corporations are increasingly making overseas internships available.

Once logistics are settled, students sometimes land in exciting environments.

Melissa Sconyers, a senior at the University of Texas-Austin, worked last year in Beijing on a Chinese government project to make the city's website more foreigner-friendly. She practiced her Chinese while offering suggestions to make the site more navigable and the English sentences more readable.

At times, she says, "it was challenging to figure out what appropriate conduct was and how much feedback to give." Example: She wasn't sure how to react when her boss once noticed she seemed tired and suggested she take a nap.

"I had no idea whether it was a joke or if he thought I'd be more productive after putting my head down for a while," Sconyers says. She had seen Chinese construction workers nap on the job but had never seen her co-workers doing so, so she politely declined.

For the privilege of gaining overseas work experience, students and their families pay a monetary price. Overseas internships often aren't paid, either because an organization doesn't have a budget for such positions or because local laws prohibit the short-term hiring of foreigners. Plus, private programs that make arrangements charge a fee. Internships arranged through the San Francisco-based Foundation for Sustainable Development, for instance, range from $1,150 for one week to $4,950 for six months. Fees include room and board but not airfare.

Despite the costs, schools are trying to make opportunities more accessible. Several private colleges offer stipends to help defray costs associated with unpaid internships. And if an approved internship qualifies for academic credit, a student may be able to use loans, grants and scholarship money. Another option: going in the summer, when a shorter duration means a lower fee. Ultimately, students need to figure out how much risk, financial and otherwise, they're willing to take to advance their careers.

"To go into a workplace with limited language ability, and when you really don't understand the culture all that much, is pretty risky relative to taking an internship in the U.S.," says the Institute for the International Education of Students' Mary Dwyer. "But this is a risk-taking generation."