There are so many more tempting alternatives to working in an internship over the summer. You could be backpacking through another continent or partying on the beach. You could be earning more money as a nanny, or hanging on to your childhood as a camp counselor. But if you’ve clicked on this story, you know that those probably aren’t the smartest, most responsible ways to spend the summer months as you look toward building a future career.While there’s no guarantee that you’ll be offered a sweet job immediately after completing an internship, it’s a pretty reliable way to get there eventually. For one, you’ll be building up a résumé with more than just retail and babysitting jobs. You’ll also be meeting people in the industry you’ve set your sights on, and those will become part of the network that you’ll need to find work later.”The biggest issue with applying for a job on a job board is that there are hundreds of other people also applying for those same jobs," career coach Elana Konstant tells Refinery29, reminding everyone why networking is the key to everything.Another benefit of internships no one talks about: This is a great way to determine if the career you think you want is really right for you. Maybe you actually wind up hating it. Or you might discover that there’s a specific path within that industry that you want to pursue.So how do you go about landing the summer internship that will launch your future? You could park yourself in front of the computer and apply to every opening you find. Or you could work a little smarter. Here’s how:"Some industries recruit [interns] almost a full year in advance of the summer," says A-J Aronstein, associate dean of Beyond Barnard, Barnard College’s career-development office. Financial services, consulting, and tech companies tend to be the ones with that early timeline, especially because some of them actually do hire directly from their intern pool. But many other industries and smaller companies without rigid internship programs don’t hire until spring, so don’t panic if you get a late start.If you’re in college now, you probably already know that your career-development office is a great first stop. For one thing, there may be companies that recruit directly through your school because the hiring manager (or a person above them) is an alumnus. The office may also have advisers who can edit your résumé and walk you through all the other places to look for openings.In addition to all the big job-search sites out there, such as Indeed and LinkedIn, there are others specifically meant for internships:Internships.com and Internjobs.com are standard search boards that are worth a visit. Youtern.com uses matching technology to find the best-fitting gig. WayUp is an attractively designed site and app that promises to customize your search for internships and entry-level jobs.If you are looking for an internship in a certain industry, it’s also good to look at more specialized job boards. Ed2010 has intern listings in the media industry; Idealist has listings at nonprofits; and CreativeGuild has posts for, well, creatives."LinkedIn is one of the most important tools that anyone who’s starting to look for an internship can possibly leverage," Aronstein says.Aronstein tells students to start by searching on a company they would love to work at and using their college as a filter. That leads to a list of people who went to your school who either work there now or used to work there."Click connect and then add a note to your connection request that’s a short invitation to a 30-minute conversation," he says. This isn’t where you send your résumé, but rather an opportunity to ask the person about what they do and what they like about the company. After you have a conversation online or in person, you can ask if they know of internship opportunities, or if they wouldn’t mind being mentioned if you wind up applying to something there.As you’re searching on LinkedIn, you can also see where people who work at your dream company wind up working next. Some go on to smaller companies or less well-known organizations that could have opportunities for you. While you may think you need a big, famous brand on your résumé, those don’t necessarily make for the best internship experiences if you’ll just be getting coffee and doing data entry."The best internship, regardless of the size of a company, is one where you’re actually learning real things that will help you be the best professional you can possibly be down the road," says Porter Braswell, CEO of the career platform Jopwell and author of the book Let Them See You: The Guide for Leveraging Your Diversity at Work. When you network with other employees and at your interview for the internship, try to get a sense of what kind of work they’ll be asking of you and whether you’ll receive guidance and mentorship along the way."Organizations that offer paid internships understand the value of the work that you’re going to be producing for them," Braswell says. "If anything, I think it’s a signal of what you’re about to experience there."Offering unpaid positions used to be a standard for highly competitive industries, but luckily laws and progressive thinking have caught up. Companies that value diversity know they might only be attracting people with wealthy parents unless they offer some compensation to their interns. The bonus is that because they’re paying interns, these places make sure to give them work to do, too.Unfortunately, there are still some places (particularly nonprofits) that will only offer internships for credit. You could decide to work a night job to support yourself while you gain that professional experience. Or you could apply for a grant to help cover your expenses."This extends the internship timeline to find funding that can be matched to your internship, but that’s not to say that it’s impossible," Aronstein says. Some colleges offer these grants, as do some industries.Don’t think you can just download a résumé template from the internet and send it off everywhere without another thought."If you’re applying to 100 internships and sending the same résumé and cover letter everywhere, then you are mostly wasting your time," Aronstein says. "Instead, spend that time really tailoring your materials to the internships that you actually want."You may not have a ton of job experience — that’s what these internships are for, after all — but you can play up the things you have done that would be relevant to the work you want. To apply for a marketing job, discuss the social media work you did as a camp counselor. For a consulting firm internship, you can discuss how you managed a group project at school."What you can show them is that you’re already thinking about how what you’ve done in the past might map onto the responsibilities that you imagine you’ll have to do in the role that’s in front of you," Aronstein says.Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?I Went From Making $50,000 To $18.50 An Hour & I’m Happier NowA Week In Suburban Detroit On A $104,000 SalaryThese Are The 10 Best Jobs In The U.S. According To Glassdoor
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Source: Refinery29