Secrets to Securing Top-tier Internship Opportunities
With summer approaching, many students are joining the search for internships, hoping to enhance their work experience and boost their soft skills during the break. Here's a guide on securing that first internship even without prior work experience, by enriching your background through extracurricular activities and competitions.
Participate in Competitions: High-profile competitions like International Olympiads can demonstrate academic expertise and improve competitiveness. Business students could join corporate-organized competitions like L'Oreal or P&G Business Challenge, showcasing problem-solving and innovative abilities. Top performers might get a direct internship opportunity.
Join University Clubs: Clubs can demonstrate your comprehensive abilities and interests. Be it related to your major or enhancing other skills, clubs can add depth to your resume. For instance, a coding club can demonstrate technical proficiency for a computer science internship, while participation in non-related clubs can showcase skills like organization, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving.
Engage in Projects: Projects are excellent ways to show self-learning, independent thinking, and innovation, proving beneficial for internship applications. Projects can be independently taken up or in teams and can be part of extracurricular or curricular work. For humanities students, research papers and projects play a similar role.
Participate in Research Projects: Similar to competitions, research can significantly aid in internship applications. Professors usually welcome students joining research initiatives voluntarily, as it reflects academic expertise and teamwork.
Undertake Unpaid Internships: For beginners with no internship experience, even unpaid internships can be beneficial. The skills learned in internships, irrespective of the pay, serve as long-term advantages and stepping stones for better opportunities.
Earn Professional Certifications: These certificates assure academic abilities, and preparing for these exams can enhance professional knowledge, laying a foundation for the first internship. Business-related certificates include CFA, FRM, ACCA, and CPA.
Attend Networking Events: Career centers in most schools organize networking events, where industry experts share their experiences, providing recruitment information. Other similar social events include coffee chats.
Achieving the above points can enhance students' competitiveness. However, initial planning and showcasing student abilities are also crucial. Institutions like our study-abroad organization established at Harvard University can offer professional help, like career planning, interview training, resume editing, etc., helping students prepare for their first internship.
