How to land an internship during your college years WITHOUT any EXPERIENCE

In this article I will be speaking from my personal experience, I'm not an experienced writer, I will try my best to organize this article in a way it can be readable and informative. A quick introduction about myself, my name is Bassem El-Amir, I was an average student who graduated from an average University, Helwan University, with a degree in mechatronics engineering, class of 2019, I joined ABB, PepsiCo and Siemens for summer internships during my 5 years of college.

Summer is around the corner, which means that applications for summer internships are going to be opened anytime soon, and if you're a college student, I encourage you to read this article, it might help you.

Students sometimes underestimate the importance of having internships and sometimes get overwhelmed by the boring process, some students can easily lose hope after a couple of applications with no response back, and they start believing that internships are only for students with referrals, which is not always right. Before diving into the main topic, I want to discuss first.. ? ??

Why you should work as hard as possible to land an internship?

If you don't have the motivation yet to start chasing internships, let me list to you some benefits of having an internship:

1. Explore career paths, probably you can list at least 10 different jobs in the first year or two of college, and probably also, your interests between them are going to change interchangeably, and every month or two you start thinking that "THIS IS MY DREAM JOB!" The problem is hearing about the job and DOING the job is totally different, and internships let you have the opportunity of exploring different job to make it easier for you to decide which path to take and invest your time and efforts in.
2. Gain valuable work experience, you will combine the theoretical knowledge you're getting at college with the practical real work experiences, witnessing firsthand the day-to-day job duties they can expect to encounter in their chosen field.
3. ?Experiencing different industries, every industry does business in a different way, industries differ in their dynamics, competition, product prices, and many other factors go into account, and all these factors affect the decision making and the pace of work, so you will get to choose the lifestyle that fits you best.
4. Network with professionals in the field, and believe me, this makes wonders; it may get you your first full-time job after graduation very easily.
5. Gain confidence, internships allow you to test out specific techniques learned in the classroom before entering the working world. It’s an opportunity to apply what you have learned in a safe environment where mistakes are expected – rather than learn the hard way in your first job out of college.
6. Receive financial compensation, it may not be as high salary as you wish, but the highest I received was 3k EGP net monthly, and the lowest was 660 EGP net monthly. (Both internships were great and I learnt a lot from them!)

But what if you already have the motivation, and you're filling lots of applications but you've never made it past the first stage of interviewing which feels so frustrating I know, you have to realize that the number of students in Egypt that are looking for internships outnumbers the internships vacancies by too much! So the competition is very tough, maybe even tougher than in the real market after graduation! So, this doesn't make you a less competency student at all. However, I will try as hard as possible to guide to land your first internship, which is the hardest to land, the rest will follow and your CV will look more interesting that it will ease your interviews as you will have "something" to talk about.

So..

How to get an internship WITHOUT any EXPERIENCE?

Actually the truth is, you can't do this! You have to put yourself in the recruiters shoes, if you have 10 applications in your hand, and 1 vacancy only, 8 out of the 10 applications are students with a CV that has their personal information and unrelated hobbies and interests, and on the other hand the remaining 2 applications are for a student who had an internship in competitor company last year, and the other was a student with no work experience but lots of extracurricular activities that shows he/she is an extra-miler, certainly you would choose one of these 2 for the internship, right? This is the truth to a great extent, however the choosing criteria for the interns, differs from a company to another and from an industry to another.

PS: Some internships get more than 2,000 applications so you got to imagine the way/speed the recruiter will look at your CV/application.

I will list below the criteria I noticed interns being selected for and how can you use this for your favor, this is applied in almost all multinational companies, which by the way, have the best internships programs and you don't need any referrals to join them as you've been told! The below will help you reach the interviews, and the interviews is all about showing confidence, energy, and interest in joining the internship.

1. GPA/Grade, you're a student, this is the only indicator that tells how good you are, and also it's looked to as an easy filtration process by recruiters. However it's worth noting that there is a strong emphasis on GPA/Grade in technical internships for Engineers, don't expect to have an internship in automation, while you barely passed your exam.
2. Previous Work Experience, I know this is ironic, reading an article about how to land an internship and telling you at the same time that you should have a previous work experience, however I don't want you to link "Previous Work Experience" with only internships, I advise you to start investing yourself, since day 1 at college, summer jobs ( in any field ) will help you have a more interesting CV when you're a student, extracurricular activities, as I have mentioned earlier will help too, same goes for freelancing. Bottom line is that an internship doesn't have to be the first work experience you have on your CV, any contract, part-time, project, volunteering job will give you an edge and make you more likely to be selected for the interviews.
3. Diversity, multinational companies try as hard as possible to have a diversity among their interns, in many areas, Gender, Universities ( Public Universities and Private Universities ),.. etc., for example, if you're a female engineer trying to get a technical internship, your chance would be higher than if you were a male, since the number of female engineers are less than male engineers. I'm very confident I landed internships just because I'm a Helwan University student (which is not very common), I remember in PepsiCo's internship, we were 2 students only from Helwan University out of 52 students, a female mechanical engineer and myself, and btw I was ranked second in the internship, and she was the third, so if you're a Helwan University student/graduate, be noted that we rock! ;)
4. Demonstrated interest in the industry firstly and the job title secondly, I'm pretty sure that most of you have previously applied to an internship, because he/she felt he/she needs to do it, and not because he/she really wants to have this internship, the problem of this lack of desire/interest, is that it's easily be seen in the applications, in the first question maybe of why do you want join this internship? And you start writing vague and very cliché answers. Sometimes, the internships' applications are very boring but this is only due to the fact they don't want to receive applications except from the students that want this internship the most (another way of filtration also)
5. Ability to work full-time for the internships period, if somehow, the recruiter felt you're not going to commit to the full internship period, you won't be considered.

Keep the above in your mind when applying to internships, and don't be scared if you lack one of the points, your strong points in your application can compensate for your weak points. Internships are quite enjoyable experience and worth the effort you put in the applications, so keep it up and keep applying to internships that interests you.

Also I will list below some generic tips and advices that might help you:

• The Internship Requirements, if you don't fit the requirements, please don't apply on it and only apply for the internships that you match the requirements of. Don't be a Freshman and applying for internships that need Senior students, you're application will be automatically neglected.
• LinkedIn Job Alerts, many students think that the number of internships available every year are not more than 10 internships, create a daily LinkedIn job alert with "internship" as a keyword and your city in the location, it's true that you will receive irrelevant internships, but that way, you will be the first to know about a certain internship, it becomes even more helpful if an internship has a near closing date.

PS: I know that google has the same capabilities but I didn't try it myself, give it a try!

• Custom Made CV for every internship work title, when you start adding work experiences and extracurricular activities to your CV, you got to start modifying and customizing your CV for different titles you're interested in. If for example, you're interested in Sales, Supply Chain, and Embedded systems, you have to have 3 CVs, and every CV show the emphasis on a specific field from these 3 fields, Bold the related courses and add them to the top of list of your courses, manage it your way so that the recruiter that sees your CV for a Sales internship, knows that you have experience in Sales, Supply Chain and Embedded systems, but you're interested more in Sales, don't state directly anywhere, but let the recruiter make this impression, if you succeeded in this, congratulations, you will be invited to the interview.
• Dress well in your interviews; don't dress recklessly, first impression matters.

One of the goals of internships is getting students a step closer towards the market, and having them ready for employment after graduation, it's true that having an internship increases your chances of having a full-time job in the company you had the internship in, so make sure to use your resources very well during the internship period.