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How do you find an internship that is not beyond you capabilities, yet you can still learn from?

#internship #career #internships #summer-jobs #intern #interning #jobs

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Bryant’s Answer

Finding out an internship that may be in your field or another field. Before internships, volunteering can help give more skills especially joining professional organizations. Each internship will be different but you want one where you can learn by researching it online, finding those that had an internship in the field or company that you are interested and even asking about it on the interview. Let me know if you need any other help and if this answered your question?

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Ayesha’s Answer

A number of schools and colleges have career advising facilities that help connect students with internships relevant to their field. You can also look for challenging internships via career sites such as LinkedIn and Monster.com, and also in local newspapers/adverts.

Internships are a great sneak-peek into what the professional world looks like, where you are very commonly expected to take up tasks that are not necessarily related to your major or expertise. For this purpose, I would recommend you broaden your search for an internship to include jobs that might not be closely linked to your current skill-set but appeal to you in terms of learning a new skill that complements your capabilities and challenges you to develop a dynamic professional profile.
Career paths are hardly static so think about your next potential internship/volunteer project as an opportunity to learn new skills while polishing the existing ones.

Hope this helps!
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Samantha’s Answer

Think about an industry or job that you're interested in and research what kind of internship opportunities they may have. If you're a college student, the career center at your school will have great information on companies that are looking for college interns. If you're in high school, keep researching on CareerVillage and see what you can find on google!

Ask questions in informational interviews. Many companies hire interns in the hopes that they will work full time with that company after college. In that case, they aim to train interns in the work they would actually be doing in a full time job. Ask interviewers or other professionals what type of work an intern does at their company to learn more!

Samantha recommends the following next steps:

keep asking questions on CareerVillage
research opportunities online
check with your career center
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Cristin’s Answer

If you find a role you are interested in first - apply! Then when you are waiting to hear back you can reach out to someone on LinkedIn that is doing a similar job and ask them what foundational skills are needed for the role. Tell them about your background and see if they have any suggestions on skills you can brush up on to be more prepared for the internships. Also, when you have them on the phone you can always ask them to refer you for the internship position. I also always recommend finding an alumnus from your school. Alums are almost always willing to give you more time than just a random person at the company.
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Simeon’s Answer

I would reach out to your teachers and see if they know of any internships or work opportunities. Check the websites of companies that you'd like to work for someday and send inquiry emails. Even if a company doesn't know of an internship, they might know of other companies that do offer internships. If you can't find a summer internship, you could also try working at a summer camp. You'll make a lot of new friends and you can often leverage new connections to find job/internship opportunities.
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Michelle’s Answer

Hi Viansa,

One tip I have for ensuring you will learn during an internship but not feel like you're doing something completely out of your skill set/knowledge is to intern in an industry you don't know a lot about. For example, I am a marketing major and when searching for internships, I was very interested in working at a marketing agency or a tech company. However, this summer I am actually an intern at a bank and I have been enjoying learning a lot about an industry that I didn't know too much about before this experience! My internship relates to marketing so it is still within my interests/capabilities, but it will allow me to discover and explore marketing within banking. I bet working at an agency would have been valuable as well, but my advice is not to be afraid if an opportunity presents itself that is different from what you planned or imagined for your internship. You can still learn a lot!
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Kara’s Answer

That's a great question! In addition to what others have mentioned, if you're unable to find an explicit "internship," what you can do is find other ways to continue learning and broadening your experience. Then, when you're recruiting for internships in future years, you can show how you problem-solved and were able to continue growing during this time: "I did the following to continue learning and grow my experience:......"

I don't know what is financially feasible for you, but there are a few options you could consider, in addition to the ideas already mentioned:
- Contact folks at companies you're interested in and see if you can shadow one or more of their employees. You could do this for a bunch of companies and get a wide range of exposure to different workplaces! If you go this route, I would suggest waiting a bit closer to the summer to contact companies.
- Spend some time working on a self-created project. It doesn't have to be a "startup," per say... But you could do work on background research (e.g., explore different market opportunities or customer needs) and lay out the groundwork for a company/initiative you'd be interested in building some day. You could even go out and start a project or make an app for your community! Times like this are great for entrepreneurial spirit.
Again, these are all just ideas. What you get to tap into is "What am I really interested in learning and developing?" and then you can find a way to go do that without the pressure of a specific internship.
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Kimberly’s Answer

Hi Samantha,
Great question! The good news is there are a lot of internships out there that are based on entry level and do not tend to require a lot of prior work experience. Internships are a great source to utilize in order to see what field you might want to work in one day. You might also make some potential future job connections while doing an internship. I would suggest checking online for certain organizations, communities, and careers you might be interested in working in and apply for internships and/or ask around how you can volunteer for them. Once you start looking, I am sure you will find plenty that interest you!
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Max’s Answer


I was asking myself this same question when searching for my first internship. Many times colleges or communities have career fairs with companies that are looking to hire new employees. These can be extremely helpful because you get to interact with the recruiters in person. It is important to bring multiple resumes and research the companies before hand. The positions they are looking to fill are normally posted online as well.

Don't be afraid to apply for an internship that will challenge you. If you make it through the interview process and receive an offer, that means the company believes you have what it takes to be successful in the position. Once hired, you are not expected to know everything. Internships are meant for learning and getting a feel for the company/industry.
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