The 10 Best Websites For Finding An Internship
Andrea Silvestrin
COO @ Botany Labs | Co-Founder @ MoonBloom | Portfolio Manager @ Allianz Technology
This simple list could save you a ton of time searching online.
From my Brief but intense experience in finding an internship online I would suggest job seekers to limit their time online. Spending eight hours fine-tuning your search criteria into job board aggregators like Indeed or SimplyHired and then sending your résumé into a "black hole" by hitting the 'apply' button, is almost guaranteed to get you nowhere.
Most jobs posted online have either already been filled or - more likely - will be taken by someone with some sort of personal connection with the company.
If you want to have a shot at getting hired for a job listed online, you have to reach beyond the posting, scouring LinkedIn and your personal network for a contact at the company, meeting with that contact, doing lots of research on the company, trying to land an in-person meeting with the hiring manager by writing a carefully-crafted email that shows how passioned you are about the position and how you could really solve the company’s problems.
But I think the story is different for internships, especially if you are, as I was, in college-age and looking for a summer spot.
With this, I don’t want to deter anyone from hunting for internships the way job seekers should go about their search, by first tapping their network, relying on personal referrals and targeting companies that attract them. But because online searches really can work for internships, and also help you focus on what you want, I’ve put together a list of the best sites for finding an internship:
1. LinkedIn: Not only should you use LinkedIn to hunt for internships, you should build a fleshed-out profile and reach out to everyone you know, especially professional contacts, on the 12-year-old Mountain View, CA professional networking site. Get people you’ve worked for to write you recommendations. Do include volunteer work.
To search for internship listings, go to the jobs tab at the top of the page and put “internship” in the search box. Then refine your search by filling in the boxes on the left side of the page. I searched for “marketing internship” and a New York City zip code came up with ten pages of listings.
One downside: You can’t filter for paid or unpaid positions.
The most valuable aspect of LinkedIn: instantly seeing which of your contacts works at a company or knows people who work there. I also recommend college students get their parents to search their own LinkedIn networks for contacts. Companies pay varying rates to list internships and jobs on LinkedIn (a 30-day posting in a City like San Francisco costs $499), so they are serious about hiring for many of those jobs.
2. Glassdoor: Founded in 2007 and based in Sausalito, CA, Glassdoor gets its internship listings from several sources, including company websites, partnerships with job boards and directly from employers.
But its main attraction is that it offers an instant way to search for salaries, company reviews and descriptions of job interviews. Its interface is straightforward, though for smaller companies, the salary and review functions don’t always bear fruit. In the search fields I tried putting in “paid marketing internship” and in the location box, New York City, and I got 21 listings. When I clicked on the first listing that came up, for Inspired Marketing Associates in the Bronx, I found just two company reviews and no salary listings. But a paid internship for Major League Baseball had 37 reviews and one internship salary ($1,660/month).
3. Google: Don’t underestimate the power of a Google search. I put in “paid marketing internship New York City” and got hits for several of the sites in this piece and others I’m not familiar with, like FindSpark, which bills itself as having “the best creative internships & entry level jobs in NYC.” I like that you can filter for paid internships (I believe that by law, almost all internships should be paid, but that’s another story), though when I filtered for paid marketing internship, only one job came up, at Inc. magazine. Still, Google is a great shortcut.
4. Your school’s job listing site and alumni network: At my alma mater, Ca' Foscari University, there’s something called Ca' Foscari Alumni, where alumni post internship listings. If you can get access to a database like this, you will vault over other potential interns vying for these jobs. This is a first stop if you are a student.
5. Internships.com: Founded in 2010, Internships.com is now owned by textbook rental and online tutoring company Chegg in Santa Clara, CA.
It offers 100,000 listings from 60,000 employers. Internships.com does not charge employers to list positions. When I searched for “paid marketing internship” in New York City, I got 10 listings.
One huge advantage the site offers: a “who” button that lets you see which of your Facebook friends have a connection to a company, either because they work there or used to work there. Facebook has no job listings and no other site I could find has the capability to match a job search with your friends’ résumés.
6. Internmatch.com: Founded in 2009, San Francisco-based Internmatch has listings from 30,000 companies. It specializes in internships, and entry level jobs up to two years after graduation.
When I searched for “paid marketing internship” in New York City I got seven pages of results, even though not all of them were paid, there were some promising listings.
You can sign up and the site will send you notifications when new internships in your area of interest are posted. Employers can post up to 10 listings for free, after which they pay a fee. Some of the big companies who have listed on the site: Facebook, Zappos, Aflac.
7. YouTern An unusual site, YouTern tries to mentor and connect would-be interns using social media tools like Twitter.
Internship seekers fill out a profile and interact with mentors. Founder Mark Babbitt says he has relationships with recruiters at 100 companies and personally refers appropriate candidates. But internship seekers need to interact with the site before they get referred to jobs. YouTern also includes a jobs board powered by aggregator SimplyHired.
Babbitt says he has connections with many startups but also works with established companies like ad firm Ogilvy & Mather. YouTern launched in 2010 and is based in Lake Tahoe, NV.
8. Idealist: An excellent site to look for both internships and jobs in the non-profit sector, Idealist, based in Portland, OR, dates back to 1996. Run as a non-profit, it has listings for organizations around the world. The site currently lists more than 2,000 internships worldwide. A couple of current offerings for paid internships: a fundraising position in Washington, DC for the National Hispanic Council on Aging and a summer internship at the progressive Nation magazine and Nation Institute.
9. Global Experiences: Founded in 2001 and based in Annapolis, MD, Global Experiences offers internships where interns pay instead of getting paid.
The plus: genuine work experience in foreign cities. Global Experiences works in eight cities—London, Paris, Dublin, Barcelona, Florence, Milan, Shanghai and Sydney. Prices range from $6,000 to $10,000 per internship stint. Company founder Emily Merson says that some colleges like Arizona State, University of Southern California and University of Illinois have partnerships with the company and pick up the tab. Students must apply but once they’re accepted, placement is 100% guaranteed.
10. CoolWorks: This site isn’t for internships per se, but rather for jobs, especially summer positions, geared toward young people.
According to the website, it offers “job opportunities in great places like national parks, various resorts, ranches, camps, ski resorts, and jobs on the water.” Founded in 1995 it’s based, rather exotically, just outside the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
Sample jobs: Ranch Foreman/Ranch Hand/Wrangler/Packer at a ranch called Flying B in Idaho wilderness located on the middle fork of the Salmon River, and Rafting Guide on the Arkansas River in Buena Vista, Colorado.
Some of the jobs are listed as “internships,” but they seem indistinguishable from the other jobs on the site. Example: positions with Alaska Wildland Adventures on the Kenai Peninsula in Denali National Park.
Just one closing tip:
Wether you're looking for an internship of for a full-time employment, do it actively. Nothing comes without efforts, before finding an internship in a Barcelona-based start-up I spent 3 months looking for positions on job boards, subscribing to news letters and going through Companie's websites.
The worst thing you could do is throwing your CV on the internet and hope someone will come and offer you the job of your life: it doesn't work like that.
Be consistent in what you do and results will come along. And if they don't, try harder.