It was early May, and I was in a situation I never anticipated. I had spent months bolstering my LinkedIn profile, penning multiple, ever-so-slightly different iterations of my resume and cover letter, all ultimately leading to either no response or an outright rejection. The internship search was fruitless — until I was suddenly weighing two different summer internship opportunities. One was at a PR firm in Boston, the other as a beauty editorial intern at Her Campus.
For those that don’t know, I am hugely indecisive and paralyzed with the fear of making the wrong decision. So, obviously, I found myself in quite the predicament. I was thrilled about the prospect of interning at the empowering, fun work environment that was Her Campus, and I thought that interning at a company that I had some prior knowledge of and experience with would be really valuable. Plus, I love writing, especially about beauty, and I was excited to continue to develop that skill. But while I do love writing articles, I am not interested in pursuing journalism as a career. So, I also wanted to use my summer internship as an opportunity to try something completely new, explore an industry that I was completely unfamiliar with, and gain a wide breadth of exposure experience. The PR firm internship would provide me with that, as was pitched to me as a fast-paced, multifarious experience, in which I would be bouncing around from client to client and from task to task. I aspire to pursue a career in public relations or marketing, so I thought that interning at a PR firm would provide more utility in the long run.
When it came down to the wire, I was still struggling to decide, so I took a risk: I accepted both! Both places had flexibility in terms of number of days per week I came in, so I interned at each company two days per week.
Doing both internships ultimately provided me unique experiences from which I learned a lot. So, if you find yourself in my position and are deciding whether or not to do two internships, here’s what I learned and what you need to know:
You can solidify your career aspirations
Figuring out what the heck I want to do for a living and being able to build my resume that’s targeted to the career field I want to go into were huge goals for me this summer. Having worked at an overnight camp the previous summer, I figured I had some catching up to do in the ways of career development.
Doing two internships gave me a solid introduction and an inside look into the fields of public relations and journalism. Even if I wasn’t the most efficient, time-maximizing intern by only coming into the office two days a week, being able to witness the daily operations and learning more about my superiors’ positions was very enlightening. As a liberal arts student with a major that doesn’t have a clear connection to one particular field, it’s easy to feel distanced from the work world. I loved the opportunity to learn about potential career paths in a time-efficient way.
You will learn about the types of work you like to do
Arguably more important than discovering what career path you want to pursue, I learned how I worked best and what types of non-academic tasks I enjoy working on. Because these two different internship experiences were structured so differently, I got to experience different tasks and workflow schedules. At Her Campus, my work was published online and I felt so honored to be that visible as an intern. Developing my voice, writing about what I was most passionate about within the scope of beauty, and having agency and creative freedom when it came to pitching was an extremely valuable experience. While I still don’t know if journalism is completely for me, from this experience, I learned that I hate menial tasks, I thrive in a work environment in which the workflow is structured and consistent, I love being creative, I need consistent feedback, and I feel immensely fulfilled by seeing a long project through to completion.
Now that I know this about myself, I am able to search for future jobs or internships that check all of these boxes, and am more able to articulately communicate my needs and goals with a future supervisor.
There might be more of a learning curve, and it might get overwhelming
At Her Campus, one of my main responsibilities was writing articles; because I had written articles for Conn’s Her Campus chapter, there wasn’t as much of a learning curve. Had I interned in two completely different industries, or in two industries that I knew absolutely nothing about, that would have been too much of a shock and too much to keep up with at once.
You can have a well-rounded experience
I’ve been told that public relations and marketing is all about having strong writing skills — an ability that I was able to develop as an editorial intern at Her Campus. While also working at the PR firm, I was able to gain exposure to the industry I wanted to work in. At Her Campus, I had a set schedule for each day I was in the office and a set timeline for each assignment. At the PR firm, I was bouncing around between clients, different supervisors, and different types of tasks. I was able to get breadth at the PR firm, and depth at Her Campus, gaining an overall well-rounded experience.
It’s harder to stand out
Even if there’s no requirement to intern full-time, if you’re not in the office every day, there might be fewer chances to make a positive impression on your supervisor, and they might be more reluctant to assign you longer-term projects. At the PR firm, I was one of at least twenty interns, all reporting to the same five individuals. Because I was only in the office a couple of times a week, it took the full-time employees longer to learn my name and my schedule, and they were more likely to assign tasks to the interns they were more familiar with.
Rapport-building might be tricky
Because I saw my coworkers, bosses, and fellow interns pretty infrequently, it was hard to get into the groove of things socially. I am a pretty introverted person by nature, so if you’re more extroverted than me, you might not have this problem. But for me, I need to spend more time with people in order to build strong relationships. This meant being less social with the other interns, and and fewer opportunities to talk extensively with my superiors about their career paths and experiences, which is something I would have liked to do. Building solid relationships with your bosses and co-workers is important, especially as a first-time intern who’s new to office dynamics, because it makes it that much easier to come to them with any issues or questions.
You might not be the only one who isn’t in the office every day
I didn’t realize this going in, but most of the interns at both companies were part time. Many had paying jobs, others traveled, and others just weren’t scheduled for that many hours. I don’t know if interning part-time was just the norm at both companies, or if that’s a common thing to do in general. I was worried about not being in the office as often as the other interns, which ended up not always being the case.
The Bottom Line
I definitely don’t regret doing two internships, and I don’t feel as though I spread myself too thin. I think this definitely depended on the nature of each internship and the company culture. My experience went well overall largely because of how each internship was structured. Had they both been as consistent as Her Campus, or as unstructured as the PR firm, it might have been harder to keep up with.
If you’re juggling two opportunities and are considering doing them both, follow up with the interviewer and ask about daily tasks and workflow, how your responsibilities might change whether or not you intern full time vs. part time, and the company culture. These factors are what will make or break your experience. Getting a sense of the workload and daily responsibilities before making my decision allowed me to do so in an informed, educated, and strategic way.
Do you need to have two internships at once? Definitely not. Might it be advantageous? Depends on your situation. If you don’t know what you want to do after college, it might be a good way to weigh your options. And if the two opportunities are distinct from each other yet supplement each other in interesting ways, go for it. But, if you feel confident in the industry you want to go into, sticking to one company will give you more opportunities to stand out and do more impactful work. If you’ve had previous internships, even if only remotely related to what field you want to go into, I might suggest sticking with just one — there’s no reason to do two internships for the sake of building career experience. And If the two opportunities are too disjointed and unrelated, I’d suggest picking just one.
There’s not a right or wrong here in the internship search, as long as you are intentional about your decision. It all depends on what your personal goals are and what story you want your resume to tell.