I am a Junior and I have not done an internship yet! What do I do?

By: Robert Vanisko

Once you become a Junior and realize that you are over half way done with college, it can be a startling realization that there is not much time left until you are out in the real world.  But for some of you, there is one problem; you have no internship experience yet.  Sure, you worked in that restaurant during high school or have an on campus job at UM, but internships are what is important… right?

Luckily for you, there is still plenty of time to get that experience before you have to apply for real world jobs.  The Toppel Career Center has tons of great resources to help you find what you are interested in, identify possible internships in that field, and get you started on applying for them. 

The first and most important step is identifying and defining what field you are interested in working in.  Many of you will pick something in-line with your major, but others of you are less sure.  For those of you who don’t know what field you would like to work in, Toppel offers three different career assessments that you can take to determine what you want to do, the Self Directed Search, the Type Focus, and the Strong Interest Inventory.

Once you determine what type of internship you want to do, the next step is to search for available internship opportunities that you want to apply to.  Using your HireACane account, you can search for internships on your account or create a UCAN account.  UCAN, which stands for the University Career Action Network, is a database of internships posted by the University of Miami and the 21 other universities involved.  Currently, there are more than 1,300 UCAN internships available and more than 900 jobs and internships available on HireACane.

Once you have picked out the internships that you want to apply for, you have to prepare yourself to apply.  Toppel has plenty of resources to help you create and edit your resume and cover letters, and prepare you for your interviews.  They offer Effective Resumeand Cover Letter Writing Seminars as well as written guides to help you create these documents.  Toppel also offers Interviewing Skills Seminars as well as Mock and Mini-Mock Interviews.  It is very important to practice your interviewing skills before you go in for a real interview, so be sure to make use of these programs.

While finding a summer internship may seem like a daunting task while trying to balance the academic life and social life of junior year, it is actually quite simple as long as you follow the steps listed above.  For more information on all of these programs, be sure to visit hireacane.comhttp://www.sa.miami.edu/toppel/mainsite/Students/Home.aspx.