How to get through the summer internship hunt

There comes a time in every student’s life when the realities of adulthood become too real. As freshmen, we often use the classic excuse of, “I’m just settling down” to justify everything we do wrong. From our late nights out to our questionable class attendance, our 18 year-old selves are just too new to know any better.

Eventually sophomore year rolls around and it’s time to find other excuses for dodging adult responsibilities. Remember that “D” you got on your Chemistry midterm last week because you procrastinated studying for it? Don’t worry, it was only your sixth college-level chemistry test. You’ll kill it next quarter!

However, it’s the scary transition to upper-division classes and newfound pressure after sophomore year that leaves students wondering what to do next. At least that’s the current situation I am in.

As I watch my sophomore year fly by, I can’t help but feel happy about all the memories I’ve made in such a short time at UCLA. Nevertheless, I now feel like its time to finally be proactive about my future and venture out into the “real” world. What does that mean exactly? It means finding a paid (but probably unpaid) summer internship.

Summer 2016 will involve fewer hours on the couch watching TV, and more experiences that actually benefit me as a person. I want to get a deeper insight into my preferred industry and feel like I am getting one step further in my path to success. In theory that all sounds fine and dandy, but if there’s something I’ve discovered during my search for internships it’s that finding these experiences is harder than I expected.

That is why I would like to share a few of the many mistakes I made when searching for a summer internship. I can confidently say that avoiding these blunders will guarantee you success (or at least in comparison to me).

BruinView

This website is an online service provided by the UCLA Career Center that allows students to see hundreds of available job and internship openings around the country. I strongly recommend utilizing BruinView for its convenience, but read carefully when selecting on openings.

While many job openings are listed as being paid internships, it is important to check the experience needed to be eligible for the position. I applied to about 4 different paid internships before realizing that they’re in fact entry-level jobs. Needless to say, I never heard back from them.

Resumes and Cover Letters

 Your cover letter and resume are immensely important when trying to be competitive for summer internships. They are your sales pitch to potential employers, therefore meaning that there is little room for spelling errors and other mistakes.

Because I am a careless person, I have on numerous occasions sent the wrong resume and cover letter to employers. This appears unprofessional for many reasons, but mostly because it shows that the applicant didn’t take a mere few seconds to double check what was being sent. This mistake is equally frustrating as it is avoidable, and can be the difference between getting that interview or not.

Interview Prep 

After learning how to successfully execute the internship search and application process, I began receiving invitations for interviews. It felt like it was all smooth sailing from there, and that some internship would just miraculously come from one of these opportunities.

However it quickly dawned on me that interviews require some amount of preparation, as employers will often throw unexpected questions at you. It is also important to research the company you are interviewing for in order to appear knowledgeable and interested in the work you would be doing if employed.

Although charisma and proper dress attire are important to having a successful interview, I had to learn the hard way that being 100% prepared is the key to being competitive in the application process.

Dress phresh

 Follow Ups

Following up on an interview is an excellent way to show employers that you are interested in a position, but there are some precautions to take before sending that email or making that phone call.

It is important to wait an appropriate amount of time before following up with employers due to the fact that the interview process is usually a tedious one. Therefore aggressively emailing and calling an employer two days after an interview will likely not get an applicant very far. Also, my mother always told me to wait at least a week before doing a follow up, and when is she ever wrong?

What is most important about getting in contact with potential employers during the internship search is always being organized with your emails. I cannot stress this enough, as my carelessness in this sense has almost cost me a great internship opportunity.

I was lucky enough to be offered an internship by a production company for this upcoming spring quarter, and they emailed me about the good news on a Monday morning. Because I was not very focused on maintaining an organized email inbox, I didn’t actually spot the email until six days later on Saturday afternoon.

I felt that all of my trials and errors during the application process had come to nothing because of my negligence and irresponsibility, but luckily I was able to secure that opportunity by owning up to my mistake and properly following up with the company.

Moral of the story: check your email often and keep it organized. You never know when an opportunity could be sitting there waiting for you. The transition from carefree undergrad to semi-functioning adult can be a frightening one, but this summer could be the beginning of a new chapter.