It’s summer internship recruitment time, baby! When I was back in school, January to April of each year was always stressful. Everyone was trying to secure an internship for the summer season. Although, I would say that internships are not necessary to land a good full-time job, I think it definitely helps!
As someone who was able to find an internship every summer during university, below are my best tips.
Look At Multiple Job Posting Sites and Company Websites
One of the things that I think gets overlooked is the amount of different job posting sites that are available. People tend to gravitate towards the common big name ones. Such as LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, and the Government and City Job Bank. While there are many jobs and internships posted to these sites, you could be missing out on a lot of potential opportunities by only hunting on these sites. Look into industry specific job sites and even specific Facebook Groups. A few of the ones I’ve looked at previously are:
I also encourage you to look into the postings that are listed on individual company’s websites. Sometimes they only post on their website and don’t submit it to any of these job boards. Think of companies that you admire and would love to work for. Then, dig into their website to see what opportunities they have available.
In addition, if you really want to work for a specific company and there’s no current opportunity available, try to find an email contact for their HR department. Send them an email introducing yourself and your skills and tell them you’re looking for an internship to gain experience and would love to work at their company. Perhaps they were planning on hiring an intern soon, but haven’t put out the job posting. By you reaching out to them early, you could secure an interview and maybe even the job before the job is posted externally!
Cater Your Resume and Cover Letter To Each Job Posting
I’ve mentioned it in my How To Get A Job Without Connections blog post, but I’ll say it again. Make your resume and cover letter specific to the job posting that you’re applying for! By doing this, you will make sure your resume will (hopefully) pass an ATS system and get in front of a recruiter. At the very least, if you’re applying to too many internships, create a few different resume and cover letter “templates” that are catered towards a type of job posting.
When I was applying to internships, I applied to a variety of jobs. Thus, I created a different resume and cover letter template for each type of role. I had a resume and cover letter for marketing roles, operations roles, event planning roles, and arts and culture roles. This made easier to apply to many jobs and still have a resume and cover letter that was a bit more catered.
Network With Your School Alumni
Now, I know I say that networking is not the end all, be all, but it certainly helps! Especially as a student, your school alumni are typically very willing to help you out however they can. Attend networking events at your school that invite alumni! Try to build a relationship with them, or at least a conversation with them so you can add them on LinkedIn afterwards.
Also, look on the LinkedIn page of the company that you’re applying for to see if there are any alumni that work there. If there is, reach out to them and ask if they’d be open for a coffee chat so you can learn more about the company. This will help you get onto their radar and perhaps they could put in a good word for you if the conversation goes well.
Create Your Personal Brand Story
When looking for a job, you will need to find a way to standout from your peers. Your education and experiences may look very similar to your peers, but the way you present the information and convey yourself in your interviews will be how you stand out. To do this, you’ll need to develop your personal brand story. This will guide how you present your resume and cover letter, and what you’ll include in your cover letter. Most importantly, this is what you will have to demonstrate in your interviews.
Everyone loves a good story, so determine what yours is. Is it the fact that you’re studying a passion of yours? Is it the way your values and morals are what guide you in life? Find something unique about yourself and build your personal brand story based off of it and implement it throughout the job search process.
Mine was the fact that I initially pursued Nutrition and Dietetics in university, but after being required to take an introductory business course, I fell in love with business. This newfound passion drove me to switch programs and my whole career path.
Treat Interviews Like A Conversation
When I first started interviewing, I thought that I had to have my answers memorized and practiced multiple times. Even when I did that, I would still get nervous and choked up during interviews and stutter. After one time of winging an interview, I realized that if I just treated the interview like a conversation, it made it a lot easier to talk about myself and my skills. Ultimately, interviews are a real conversation, you’re trying to learn about the role and company as much as the company is learning about you.
Now, this is not to say that you shouldn’t prepare at all for an interview. I still encourage you to do background research on the company. In addition, compiling my experiences and skills into different “stories” made it easier to pull these from my memory and refine it to fit a question that is asked.
For example, I created stories for each of my volunteer experiences and listed different skills and scenarios that I encountered during that time. Then, I knew that I could use that story and scenario as an example of how what I would do in a behavioural question.
Get Your Own Experience
As I said in the beginning, I don’t believe that getting a summer internship is the key to landing a full time job after graduating. If after applying and applying, you still don’t find anything, take it into your own hands and get experience yourself! This could be in the form of volunteering, or creating something in your spare time for yourself. With the internet, there are many ways to reach out to different organizations to volunteer or to get experience working in a field on your own.
Other than gaining practical experience, you can take the time this summer to develop your skills that can help you land that next internship or full time job. There’s many great Youtube tutorials online to teach you almost everything and many online courses as well that are highly credible.
These were all of my best tips to help you land that internship this summer (or any other term if you’re a coop student)! I hope these were helpful and if you implemented any of these, let me know how it goes! Comment down below, email me or slide into my Instagram DMs.
