Competition is higher than ever and students are more talented than ever before. So how do you find an internship? The first step is to work on your resume and cover letter and make sure your career counselors have looked at them. The next step is to start applying!
One way to make internship searching both fun and useful is to start looking into brands you like or companies you would love working for and explore their internship programs. Find out more information and then decide if you want to apply there. Make a list of all of the companies that you think you might want to work for and then just keep a running list of whether or not you have applied and if you have heard back.
The next easy way to find an internship is to start looking on internship websites. Some of these include Intern Queen, Intern Sushi, Internships.com and many more. You can even find internships and jobs on LinkedIn. Many students don’t realize what a great resource LinkedIn is. Not only can you find jobs and internships, but you can find people who work at a company you’re interested in and you may even find that you have a connection with someone, which gives you leg up in the search. So how do you know what you’re missing out on if you don’t look at these sites? A professor of mine likes to say, “You don’t know what you don’t know,” and he’s right: You will never know what you’re missing until you try it out and see if you are interested.
Most, if not all, of these sites give you options on where you want to intern, such as location, industry and part time, seasonal, or full time. The Internet provides students with so many resources for internships at our fingertips that it would be a shame for us not to take advantage of them and use them!
One thing to keep in mind when internship searching is that you want to market and sell yourself when you are applying to these actual jobs. Make sure that your cover letter and resume are formatted so that no matter which browser viewers are using they can see it, such as making your Word document into a PDF. Many of these internship sites allow you to just upload your resume and cover letter so you want to make sure that it is in a universal format.
One last thing is to never give up. There are billions of companies out there that would love to have you and you just need to do the work to find them.
Good luck and happy internship searching!