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Tips On How To Get Paid Internships
Your internship is a very important step in your career path that links your academic experience to the working world. However, many students are daunted by the prospect of having to effectively pay for the privilege of working, since most internships are unpaid. However, this is not an iron-clad rule. If you can find the right placement, you can actually be paid while serving your internship hours.
Survival Of The Fittest
First things first: be aware that getting into a paid program is not that easy. Because they are so highly sought-after, the competition for them is intense.
If you're one hundred percent sure that you want a paid internship then you should be prepared to compete with other students who also need to finance their internships. Particularly in these trying times, paid positions are not easy to come by, so you will need to be ready to push yourself forward.
Time Check
In order to get a paid internship, you will need to be ready to invest a significant amount of your time to the process. You can't treat it as trivial because it's just an internship. You must be ready to commit yourself to deliver your time and high-quality work, both in the application process and in the actual internship.
Picture Yourself
To start your search, first know what is it that you really want to be and what you want to do with your life. You should also consider whether this particular internship will help you get your dream job when you have completed your degree program. Once you have a clear idea of where you want to get, you can start hunting for an internship that will help you get there.
Sell Yourself
Next, you should know how to sell yourself. Not literally, of course -- it just means that you should write your cover letter and resumé as if they were an advertisement for you. Much as a sales pitch needs to make you want to buy the product, your cover letter and resumé need to make the company want to hire you as their intern.
Your resumé should highlight your achievements and successes. Although we are generally taught not to praise ourselves, in order to attract really good companies it is absolutely essential to present yourself as an outstanding person.
On the other hand, do not give in to the temptation to pad out a slender resumé with nonexistent accomplishments. Everything you write should be a hundred percent true. Particularly when competition is tight, employers will verify your claims and will discard your application packet if fabrication is detected. In many professions, the circle of hiring managers is small enough that word will get around and you may find your name blacklisted everywhere. So don't risk it, no matter how tempting it may be to gild the lily here and there.
Know Where To Look
The problem most students encounter in finding a paid program is discovering their existence. However, it may well be easier than you would expect to locate paid internships: go ask your college placement office. They generally have information about companies that are interested in hiring college students in positions that will give them real work experience.
Many companies send representatives to college campuses to interview promising students. If this is the case, don't hesitate to schedule an interview. Particularly if your travel resources are limited, interviewing with companies that visit your campus can be a great opportunity to obtain a paying internship.
If your college placement office has proved unhelpful, don't worry. There are other means to find a good program. One good option is the telephone. You can try calling up companies and ask them if they have openings. If they do, you can ask them about details and the possibility of scheduling an interview. However, you will want to be careful not to sound desperate because that is a major turnoff for many people.
Lastly, you can also try the Internet. But if you do, avoid general search engines such as Google. Because they cover the entire Web, you can be overwhelmed with irrelevant results. Try using specialized search engines for job hunting, since they will focus on websites that offer information about available positions. Just by using the right keywords, you can find a company that will offer an internship program that will help you gain resumé-building experience while paying you actual money you can put toward living expenses or next semester's tuitiion.
