Tips For Landing an Internship Next Summer

Internships are a way to explore career choices and help you get experience in either your major or a related field. You can get these experiences working for companies big and small, and while some pay, others might just hand you a t-shirt and call it a day. Don’t worry though! While a paid experience is always nicer, internships offer you the chance to gain more knowledge in your career area—and could help you get a higher-paying job when you graduate. Here are three ways to help improve your internship search for the upcoming summer.

1. Keep Working on Your Resume

As your resume is the initial distinguisher between you and other candidates, make sure that your resume is current. Additionally, make appointments with the Career Center to help you articulately list past work experience and achievements. Keeping updated resumes on LinkedIn, Indeed, and WayUp are important tools to obtain your internship as well. This way, you can attract attention to  the maximum amount of recruiters.

2.  Broaden Your Horizon

One reason why choosing a career seems so daunting is that there are so many different kinds of jobs available in your chosen major. Sure, marketing may sound interesting, but then you have to decide: which field of marketing do you want to go into? Communications or analytics? How about accounting? Do you want to go into the private or public sector? Finance? Investment banking or equity research? The list can go on, but sometimes you feel that you don’t even know where to start. If you’re not landing any interviews in your initial area, try applying for a different field. This way, you’ll have an understanding of something outside of your major, which can give you advantages in the future and increase your overall value to a company.

3.    Stay out of town!

Admittedly, if you’re from the tri-state area, this piece of advice might not be so relevant. However, for the out of towners among us, seriously consider an internship in your home town. We all know the main perks of being an out-of-towner: Less traffic, nicer people, space to breathe, etc. One thing that isn’t so commonly talked about is how much easier it is to get an internship outside of the tri-state area. New York is a pretty popular place, so it makes sense that people all over the world want to come and work here over the summer. This makes applications a lot more competitive! A large tech company I applied to mentioned to me that there were over 2,000 people that applied for one position. Companies in other places get overlooked, simply because people don’t associate opportunities with them. Take my hometown for example —  Des Moines, Iowa. You wouldn’t know it, but there are many large companies here with the same opportunities as what you’d find in New York. There are other big organizations here specializing in insurance, fintech, marketing, computer science, and plenty more that are much less competitive to get into. 

My qualifications are probably not much more than anyone else who has successfully landed a summer internship, but I’ve had these on my mind for a while now — applying to dozens of places and countless visits to the Career Center will do that to you. Judging by how stressful my search was, hopefully you’ll take these tips and makes yours a bit easier. Good luck!

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