Planning the Course: The Internship Search

This past Monday, I attended the Career Carnival, an event put on by the Career Center every year to get students thinking about career planning. This year, for the first time, the Carnival was in conjunction with the Career Center’s Internship Grant Poster Session. For those who didn’t attend, it was a wonderful experience, complete with checklists for each class year, opportunities to meet and chat with Career Center staff, and FREE ICE CREAM!

If you did go, and if you checked out the “sophomores” table like I did, you may have picked up a handout with the heading Internships. This is a useful handout for anyone, especially students looking for a first internship (ideally the summer after freshman or sophomore year). Although some people do have success using Google, there are amazing resources, tailored to make your search easier, listed on the Career Center website. This blog post will discuss that search, and some of the resources at your disposal.

Let’s start with the basics—defining an internship. An internship, as defined by the Career Center, is “a hands-on work experience that is directly related to your career interests.” I prefer the definition that my supervisor Nicole Anderson gave—where the intern gets more out of the experience than the employer—but the first definition is more common. Internships can be full-time or part-time, take place anytime during the year (not just over the summer), and can even yield college credit.

Now, on to beginning the search. It seems daunting, really—trying to find an “internship”, one of those fancy words that brings to mind tall glass buildings and suits and cubicles with inspirational cat posters. But an internship doesn’t have to be like this (unless you want it to be, because let’s face it, who doesn’t love a picture of a kitten doing a pull-up every now and then?). 

I will, kitten. I will.

The great thing about finding an internship is that you can define the criteria. This should be your first step—identify possible organizations or companies whose purpose you agree with, whose environment you can picture yourself in, and whose required skills match your skill set. Do you know what this entails? That’s right—research! You should put in some quality time to find your ideal matches to get the most out of your internship. Your research can begin on the Career Center website. If you click on Web Resources, there is an alphabetical list of recommended websites for exploring careers and finding internships.  Many are password-protected, and you'll find the username and password right on the Web Resources page.

Jumbo Jobs, for example, contains postings of internships from employers (and alumni) who want to hire Tufts students- all you need is your Student ID number to set up an account. Other sites, like Internships USA, are robust databases or lists where thousands of organizations post internship descriptions. If you have a specific field in mind already (which most people do), there are many specialized sites that target these fields. Use Careers A-Z, a Career Center resource, to find internship links organized by field of interest. Feel free to use other sites—a friend of mine got an internship at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office by scouring the ma.gov website for any available internships for undergraduate students. The Career Center simply organizes the information for you so that you’re not Googling your life away in search of an internship.

Once your research is done and you have a pretty good idea of the right internship for you, you may think that your next step is to jump right in to the application process. While this is a possibility, you may find that a much easier route is to network. Networking is the process of reaching out to people you know to find opportunities in your career field. You may be saying to yourself right now, “I’m 19 years old. I don’t have a network. The only adults I know are my parents and their friends.” Well, your parents and their friends are a network! They are still people who know people in the professional world, and they are a resource that you should take advantage of. If you still think that you don’t have a network through family or friends, or none of the people in your life do anything related to what you want to do, then you can use the Tufts Career Advisory Network! Being a Tufts student automatically puts you in a huge network of alumni in myriad career fields. You will find a link to the CAN, a database of approximately 9600 alumni who have volunteered to discuss the internship or career search with current students (important note: do not ask these alumni directly for jobs. They volunteered as advisors, not employers, so seek advice only!) If you prefer in-person networking, you can attend campus events like the Career Fair next month or career panels, where you’ll be sure to find alumni willing to talk to current students about their career development.

After you’ve researched and networked, you should have a list of possible employers to contact. Now the fun begins. Send out emails with attached resumes and cover letters (see the Career Center website if you need help with formatting) to all the employers on your list, even if they do not say they are hiring interns. Remember, as Nicole Brooks taught us in her debut post, there’s a difference between being pushy and being persistent. The worst you’ll get is a polite decline, and the best you’ll get is an interview - the positives clearly outweigh the negatives here. After you’ve made initial contact and/or filled out an application, be sure to stay on top of everything: send follow-up emails expressing your continued interest in the position, keep tabs on the timeline for each of your applications. If you play your cards right, an offer or two should come through.

Finally, if you get an unpaid internship, look into applying for a Tufts Career Center Summer Internship Grant! Application deadlines and more information on the grant can be found (that’s right) at the Career Center website.

In closing, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about my own internship search process. It actually followed the format I laid out above very closely. I knew I wanted an internship pertaining to veterinary medicine, and that I would be home for the summer, so I began emailing animal hospitals in my town inquiring if they had any openings for interns or volunteer opportunities. Of the five or six hospitals I emailed, the first one that replied offered me an internship right away. The story may be short, but it involved research, contact with employers, and certainly organizational prowess. 

I hope that this post has been helpful in clearing up some of the uncertainties surrounding the internship process, and remember: you are in control of your search, your goals, and your cat posters.

Until next time,

Sean Boyden

Class of 2017