Starting your search for an internship signals a big step in your college career. You’ve studied hard, practiced your craft and now you’re ready to show the world (or at least your hometown) what you’ve got. While searching for an internship can be an excited time and lead to day dreams of you dominating the boardroom, it can also be a big source of stress. Between creating a resume, deciding where to apply, and preparing for an interview it can seem like a hard task to tackle.
It’s important to stay calm, be prepared and most importantly be confident in yourself. There are a lot of simple tools out there that can help you find the internship that is a perfect fit, it just comes down to knowing where to look and how to start.
The process begins with deciding where to look. Most people don’t know exactly what they want to do and don’t know the kind of job titles they should be looking for or even what companies are hiring. This is all made easier by looking at job boards. Places like Linkedin, Indeed and Glassdoor are great resources when you are just trying to see what is out there and get a sense of the kind of jobs you would be especially interested in. Spend some time clicking on job titles that sound interesting to you and read through the job descriptions to see if they’re lining up with the skill set and experience you have to offer.
Once you’ve set your sights on a few options that you’re really excited about it’s time to click apply and that all starts with a ~resume~. It is important to have a good resume because most of the time it’s the only interaction with the company you will have unless they offer you an interview. According to Mike Simpson of theinterviewguys.com, “You get, on average, 10 to 20 seconds to make a first impression with your resume…so make it count!” There is a lot of debate about how to write a resume and where to put what information, but above all I think clarity and detail are the two most important things. There are hundreds of websites out there with thousands of templates on how to write a resume that is “guaranteed to get you hired” but when you get down to it they are all pretty much the same. As long as your information is written in a clear and professional manner and you provide all the relevant details to your past experience and skills then formatting is just fluff.
With your shiny, new resume in hand (or downloaded as a PDF, as most are) you can send it out into the world to any place you want and then you get to… wait. Yes I know it’s been full of excitement up to here but the whole recruitment process as a whole can take a very long time and the bulk of it comes after you sent your resume out and you’re waiting to hear back. Lenna Fotos, a senior in Marketing with a minor in Spanish says she didn’t get her internship offer until May. “I was studying abroad which made the waiting anxiety even worse. Luckily the company I worked for was very accommodating and let me conduct my interview on Skype” say Lenna.
The final, and possibly most important step has finally arrived. The interview itself is an experience that is both exciting and nerve wracking at the same time and people deal with it in lots of different ways. Steven Gans, MD on verywell.com provides a list of 10 tips to cope with the stress of interviewing. The most important tip is, “Do Your Research. Being well-prepared is a good anxiety-reliever. Research your potential employer. Prepare answers to common questions. Every bit of preparation that you can do will help to increase your comfort level and make you feel more confident and capable in the interview.” If you know what you are walking into and have ran through some practice problems in your head you will already be 5 steps ahead of the next candidate.
Best case scenario, they call you the next day and you got the job! Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Finding a job, especially one that is the right fit for you, is a process that involves a lot of trial and error. Don’t be discouraged if you fell in love with a position and didn’t get the offer, because odds are there is a better position out there waiting for you. If you follow these steps and keep these tips in mind the job offers will be rolling in in no time.