Alexis DePuyt, a 21-year-old English major at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, was studying in London during the spring semester of her junior year when she began looking for a summer internship in the United States. She went to Internships.com and looked for internships in the Philadelphia area near her parents' house. A paid summer internship at Sweet Rose Studios, a three-year-old boutique marketing agency in nearby Blue Bell, PA, popped up. She sent her résumé and cover letter through Internships.com. Sean Rose, the firm's founder, contacted her within weeks and conducted a Skype interview with her. “She was a wonderful person.” He recalls that she was ambitious and educated and that she knew how to research what we do online. DePuyt landed the internship and thoroughly enjoyed it. “It was a fantastic opportunity to put my writing skills to use,” she says. “I did a lot of blogging, emailing, and trying to get new customers.” “She's a fantastic writer, very ambitious, autonomous, and capable of doing things without a lot of babysitting,” Rose says.
I advise job searchers to minimize their time online in most of my stories about using the Internet to find jobs. After spending eight hours putting your search criteria into job board aggregators like Indeed or SimplyHired, then pushing the “apply” button and throwing your résumé into a black hole” button, you're almost certain to get nowhere. The majority of internet job postings have either been filled or will be filled by someone with a personal connection to the organization. If you want to be considered for a job that is advertised online, you must go beyond the job description by searching LinkedIn and your personal network for a contact at the company, meeting with that contact, conducting extensive research on the company, and attempting to land an in-person meeting with the hiring manager by writing a carefully crafted email that demonstrates how passionate you are about the position. You're thinking about the job and how you can help the company handle its challenges.
However, I believe the situation is different for internships, particularly if you are a college student searching for a summer job. Many businesses accept applications from employment boards. Amanda Fox, a 20-year-old University of Connecticut junior, has never done an internship before. Instead, she had spent her summers at the YMCA as a lifeguard. She was looking for an internship where she could put her economics knowledge to use. She registered on Internmatch.com. fresh postings are sent to you on a daily basis. One of them was for Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Vernon, CT, which is only five minutes from her parents' house. Internmatch directed her to Enterprise's website, where she applied online and was hired for $10.50 per hour. She explains, "I didn't have to jump through any hoops.
1. LinkedIn:
Not only should you utilize LinkedIn to look for internships, but you should also fill out your profile and reach out to everyone you know, especially professional contacts, on the 12-year-old professional networking site based in Mountain View, California. Request letters of recommendation from people you've worked with. Include volunteer work if possible.
Go to the employment tab at the top of the page and type "internship" into the search box to see internship opportunities. Fill in the boxes on the left side of the page to narrow down your search. I searched for "marketing internship" and found ten pages of results for a zip code in New York City. listings. One drawback is that you can't filter for paid or unpaid jobs. The most useful feature of LinkedIn is the ability to quickly discover which of your contacts works at a company or knows individuals who work there. I also advise college kids to have their parents conduct a LinkedIn network search for them. Companies pay a variety of fees to publish internships and jobs on LinkedIn (a 30-day posting in San Francisco costs $499), indicating that they are serious about filling many of those positions. Smaller players, like Sean Rose, who says he posted on Internships.com since it was free and he was only employing one intern, may be put off by the fee.
2. Glassdoor:
Glassdoor, situated in Sausalito, California, collects internship listings from a variety of sources, including company websites, collaborations with job networks, and direct contact with employers. Its biggest selling point, though, is that it provides an easy way to look up salary, company ratings, and job interview descriptions. Its user interface is simple, yet the wage and review capabilities aren't usually useful for smaller businesses. I tried searching for "paid marketing internship" and "New York City" in the search fields and received 21 results. For example, when I clicked on the first listing that appeared, I found only two company reviews and no salary information for Inspired Marketing Associates in the Bronx. However, a paid internship with Major League Baseball received 37 reviews and a monthly compensation of $1,660.
3. Google:
The potency of a Google search should not be underestimated. I typed in "paid marketing internship New York City" and got results for several of the sites mentioned in this article as well as those I hadn't heard of before, such as FindSpark, which claims to provide "the top creative internships & entry-level employment in NYC." I like that you can search for paid internships (I believe that practically all internships should be paid by law, but that's another subject), but when I searched for a paid marketing internship, there was only one job listed, at Inc. magazine. Nonetheless, Google is an excellent shortcut.
5. Internships.com:
This website is formed in 2010, Internships.com is giving 100,000 listings from 60,000 employers. Internships.com is completely free.
