The Real Process of Getting an Internship
Alright everyone, let’s chat about the genuine process of getting an internship. I don’t mean the sugarcoated process where you breeze over the facts and focus only on the final result, I’m talking about the real, gritty process of getting an internship your sophomore year of college.
I have two older sisters (Carmen and Simone) who have followed the same business school path before me, but they never truly went through the typical internship process route. So for my family, I was the first one to genuinely go through the whole recruiting route. And let me tell you, it is TOUGH.
My personal internship process started in September of 2018. I think at a majority of business schools, recruiting season for internships start in the fall, so that’s when I started! I am really fortunate to go to a school that has a lot of resources for this process; they actually have a specific website where they list job postings from companies who have either partnered with or just really love the Kelley school, and they host many career fairs you can go to. For all my IU/Kelley people, UTILIZE KELLEY CONNECT AND CAREER FAIRS. I cannot emphasize that enough.
Everyday, I would wake up and immediately head to my computer where I would drop my resume, cover letter, and transcript to as many companies as possible. I’m pretty sure I opened Kelley Connect more often than I opened Twitter for like four months. I was applying to any position that I vaguely was interested in. I’m an Operations Management and Sustainable Business major, but I was dropping my information for Marketing and Supply Chain Management positions in order to increase my chances of anyone wanting me.
I went to every career fair possible. I talked to as many people as possible. I would see a company, do my little pitch, drop my resume, and hope for the best. By the end of the day, I would be incredibly exhausted but that exhaustion was worth it if it meant I got even just a pre-night invitation to a first round interview.
I kept track of all of my internships on an Excel sheet. On there, I listed the company, the position, the date I applied, the deadline, the date of when decisions came out, the location of the company, if I got a first round interview or not, and if I got a second round interview or not. Yes, it was a HUGE Excel sheet. So every time I applied for something, I would go straight to Excel and input all the information I could. I wanted everything to be organized and clean, so I would be able to easily track my process.
At the beginning of October, I started to hear back from companies through Kelley Connect. I got a couple of first round interviews, and a LOT of rejections. Every time I got a rejection it hurt a little bit, because I mean who likes rejection? But I had to keep in mind that I wasn’t just competing with sophomores, I was competing with the rest of my school who were ALSO looking for internships.
Mid-October hit, and I was starting to feel really frustrated. Everyday I would wake up and see another rejection in my inbox. I would refresh LinkedIn, and I would see people announcing their offers to amazing companies, and I couldn’t stop thinking about why I wasn’t one of them. I felt somewhat alone in this process so I turned to a couple of my friends and asked them what they thought about watching everyone around them accept offers from phenomenal companies.
All of a sudden it felt like everyone had been holding their breath and had finally let it go. Floods of relief started to flow after we all realized we were all thinking the same thing. We had all realized that we were all somewhat “secretly” applying for jobs and not saying anything about it because we didn’t want to show if we got a rejection.
We only wanted to show the successes, and immediately, I saw a problem in that. I didn’t want this process to be a secret. There is literally no point in just showing off your end result and not telling the rest of your story. It doesn’t help anyone and emphasizes the stigma that jobs come easily to you when in reality they don’t.
By the end of October, I had had so many first round interviews I could cry. It felt like no one wanted me past that, but I couldn’t just give up! With every one rejection, I pushed myself to apply to three more jobs. By this time, I had exhausted Kelley Connect, and turned to another job applying platform: LinkedIn.
I started applying to companies in any location I thought was cool: Chicago, Charlotte, San Francisco, etc. At this point, I thought that maybe an internship this summer was just never going to happen for me and I had to accept that. I started looking at other alternatives. I applied to a study abroad program in Australia for the summer (which I found out literally yesterday that I got accepted to so that’s cool), and I thought maybe that could be another option for me.
By the time I got back to school from Winter Break, I had gotten over the hurt and frustration of rejection from internships and decided that I just was not going to worry about it. I had spent too much of my time worrying and that wasn’t helping anybody. My new mindset was if it’s meant to be it will happen, and that was that.
And that’s when things started to turn around.
I got a call from a company that I had been in contact with since the end of October and was offered a second round interview (in January) with one of their company’s locations. I immediately accepted and two days later I had the interview. Then, the recruiter called AGAIN with a second round interview for ANOTHER location! I accepted, did the interview, and a week later I found out I had an offer! I accepted it, and now I know I’ll be working in Charlotte, North Carolina at a very cool water solutions and technology company as a Marketing intern.
Moral of the story?
1. APPLY TO AS MANY INTERNSHIPS AS POSSIBLE. Be committed to the process because honestly majority of the time it’s horrible and sad but when it’s good, it is so good. Take advantage of your school’s resources and LinkedIn.
2. Don’t focus on other people’s successes! You don’t know what they’ve been through to get it.
3. Keep track of your applications and the process. Excel is a good way to do that!
4. Don’t STRESS. If it happens, it’ll happen. But at the same time, be smart about it. Have a back up plan.
5. Talk about the process with your friends who are also going through it! I promise you, they all have the same qualms and frustration that you’re having. You don’t need to go through this alone.
I am incredibly grateful to have accepted an internship at a company that I truly believe in, but it didn’t just fall into my lap. It came with hard work, a lot of rejection, and time. I hope that this blog post brings some sort of transparency to what the internship process is truly like. I know reading and learning about other people’s processes helped me a lot, so I hope this helps you.