Do You Need to Find an Internship?

Some colleges have centralized internship offices. If you need or want to engage in an internship, as a college student, you need to go to that office. Other colleges have a more distributed internship function where each academic department has an internship coordinator, along with its own set of rules on what constitutes an internship. In either case, there is usually a list of approved internship sites that students can examine to see if they find something that matches their interest. The point here is that unless you have very good connections on the inside of a few companies, you always need to start with the people on your campus who are experts at both work integrated learning, and finding internship opportunities. Oh, and by the way, every college student must absolutely be aware – from at least sophomore year on – whether or not their academic major requires an internship or allows it as a major elective. Either way, every single college student should be graduating with some sort of work learning experience. Graduating without related work experience will significantly narrow your first-destination job opportunities no matter what your GPA happens to be.

How many internships are there?

Just before I published this article, I ran a labor market report examining the total number and types of internships posted in the U.S., in the past year. There were 309,916 internships posted on outward-facing servers in the past year. Here were the top 10 titles:

1.      Intern – 132,665

2.      Engineering Intern – 15,288

3.      Marketing Intern – 14,665 (but be aware that in my experience these are mostly sales, disguised behind the word “marketing” to encourage applicants)

4.      Sales Intern – 6,419

5.      Graphic Design Intern – 5,707

6.      Human Resources Intern – 5,375

7.      Social Media Intern – 4,990

8.      Pharmacy Intern – 3,957

9.      Communications Intern – 3,660

10.  Finance Intern – 3,306

Which companies posted the most internships in the past year?

One way to look for an internship is to make connections inside of the companies which post the most internships. Have you ever wondered which companies those are? Well, here are the top 50 organizations who posted internships in the past year:

1.      U.S. Bancorp

2.      Petco (yeah, that one surprised me too)

3.      IBM (that one didn’t)

4.      Walgreens Boots Alliance

5.      Enterprise Rent-A-Car

6.      Disney

7.      United Technologies Corporation

8.      Intel Corporation

9.      General Electric Company

10.  SAP

11.  Sherwin Williams

12.  Hewlett-Packard

13.  Penn State University

14.  Time Warner

15.  Anthem Blue Cross

16.  FedEx

17.  UPS (oooo, a little friendly competition going on here)

18.  Target

19.  OneMain

20.  Daimler

21.  Kroger Company

22.  Jacobs Engineering Group

23.  Lockheed Martin Corporation

24.  ADP

25.  Deloitte

26.  Live Nation

27.  Google, Inc.

28.  Northrop Grumman

29.  Johnson Controls Incorporated

30.  NBC

31.  Maine Health

32.  Tailored Brands

33.  Facebook

34.  Comcast

35.  BAE Systems

36.  General Dynamics

37.  Sony Electronics Incorporated

38.  Parsons Brickerhoff

39.  RSM UU LLP

40.  Charter Communications

41.  Raytheon

42.  Siemens

43.  Jones Lang Lasalle Inc.

44.  HDR Incorporated

45.  AARP

46.  Waste Management

47.  Microsoft Corporation

48.  Cummins Incorporated

49.  The Turner Company

50.  Bosch

What skills were sought for all of these internships?

Since I was looking into those 300,000 plus internships, I thought that I would also share the most commonly mentioned skills in all of those internships. Very interesting. Here were the top 10 skills mentioned, and the number of postings that these skills were mentioned in:

1.      Social media – 35,417

2.      Customer service – 24,483 (and you thought those fast food and retail jobs didn’t matter)

3.      Project management – 22,412 (have you looked into PMI and becoming certified in PM?)

4.      Marketing – 21,283

5.      Scheduling – 20,487

6.      Adobe Photoshop – 18,073

7.      Repair – 17,976 (yep, you need to have some hands-on skills)

8.      Sales – 17,747

9.      Python – 13,939 (the programming language, not the snake)

10.  Adobe InDesign – 11,963

What are the best ways to find an internship?

Well, first of all, I really want you to work with your career office. If you have not visited your college career office I can guarantee you three things:

First: Your resume is both incorrectly built and ineffective for today’s internship search - an entry-level resume has to be built in a way that it is A) scannable by applicant tracking systems and B) scannable by the human eye in under 30 seconds.

Second: You probably do not know the proper way to write an influential cover letter.

Third: You probably have not, first, networked within these companies with those who are already interning.

Despite all of that, I will answer the question with a few ideas, but before I do, please, please, please remember that before you start looking for an internship, you need to know all. . .yes, 100% . . .of the rules and policies of your college’s internship program. When and if you have someone on the phone, or on LinkedIn who is willing to host you or assist you, you need to be prepared to answer all questions about the process, the learning outcomes, the number of hours you need to work, when you can start, when you will end, how they will report your performance back to the school. . . .everything!

Here are some good ways to search for internships:

o  Always start with your college or departmental internship coordinator. Chances are that they have lists of where past interns worked, including those where the students had the best experiences.

o  Schedule an appointment with your college's career office - often your career coach can share a variety of ways to look for internships; by the way, those same tools will come in handy when you need to start a strategic job search.

o Look at your college career center’s job and internships board.

o  Search LinkedIn in the search box, with the words “Title: intern Company: your company of interest” and start to connect with those who already intern there – they can tell you exactly how they got their internship.

o  Search individual company websites but be strategic. Visit your career office and see if they have labor market modeling tools like the one I used to provide the lists above, so that you can focus your search on those firms, in your desired geographic search areas who have more internships to offer.

o  Attend your fall or spring college or consortium career expos and job fairs, and then follow up with those who requested that you do so, both on LinkedIn and by sending your employment documents as you promised.

o  Search LinkedIn for “Title: talent” or “Title: recruiter” and then “Company: your desired company”. You do not want to connect with VPs and senior or executive recruiters, typically, but more generally, recruiters and talent acquisition specialists. Then engage them in very brief, succinct conversations about how to apply for internships.

o  Pick up the phone and call companies of interest. This will work better with small and medium businesses. If it is a large corporation, this method may not be especially effective as the intern process is often buried too deeply in the corporate hierarchy, and you are not likely going to make it through to the right person.

o  Search out alumni from your college who work at the company of interest and connect with them through LinkedIn, or through your college’s alumni mentoring system – ask them for assistance in finding your way to the people who oversee interns.

o  Don’t discount the smallest of businesses. I have often worked with students who were interested in internships back in their hometown. Many times I have demonstrated for them how to make such phone calls, and ended up finding them an internship right down the street from where they live. Sometimes companies have never hosted interns, but there is nothing wrong with asking “Might you consider hosting one this summer?” If this works for you, just remember that your faculty member must approve what you are going to be learning; just because a company says that they will host you does not automatically make them an "approved" internship site – an internship canot be comprised of just filing papers and making coffee, or working for the family business, or just doing your regular job as your internship – you are supposed to be challenged and learning new things, otherwise what would be the point as none of those activities will really add to your value or overall employability?

o  Look for internship postings at conferences that you go to with faculty members.

o  Go to the local Chamber of Commerce websites near the cities where you want to intern. Most of the time, their membership directory is sorted by industry. You can often get names of great companies in that area who work in your industry of interest. Then either call them up or try to connect with one of their managers on LinkedIn.

o Of course, be sure to use the "Jobs" feature in LinkedIn. I have seen tons of internships posted on LinkedIn. Then use the "easy apply" button when the company has made it available. But here is a huge warning. Do not use your LinkedIn profile for searching and applying unless it has been vetted and thoroughly reviewed by a career professional at your college. Many LinkedIn profiles out there are improperly built and, frankly, horrible. Believe me, I have seen them. Always, always, always work with someone who does this stuff for a living.

o Last, and certainly least, go ahead and use those awful, huge, mega job boards. I don't have to say their names; you know who I'm talking about. Never create a profile on any of those boards because some of them sell your profile to other jobs boards and then you can't get it back, in which case this old version of you will exist forever on the Internet. Instead always click the "apply on company website" button before applying. Just remember, applying on these job boards throws your resume onto a pile of hundreds, sometimes thousands of others. That's why I don't like them. Networking is much more effective.

Summing it up.

Well, I could go on and on. So, use some of the advice in the article, work closely with your faculty members or mentors. Make sure 100% of your employment documents are polished and ready to go long before you start looking, make good connections, do not be afraid to pick up the phone, but know what you are going to say and all of the details of your internship program before your search begins, and before you make contact with those with hiring influence.

Remember, last year, about 53% of internships were converted to full time jobs in the U.S. (NACE, 2018). Also, studies clearly show that “relevant experience” is still the most desired item on a new graduate’s resume.

It’s your future. Take charge!