The Summer Internship Hunt

By Kelly Martin, Toppel Peer Advisor

It’s that time of year again: the humidity is creeping back into our weather, professors are starting to remind you to actually start that final project you’ve known about for the whole semester, and the “what am I doing this summer?!” panic sets in as you realize we are a little over a month away from the end of the year. So inevitably, we here at Toppel are hearing the same question over and over: how do I find a summer internship?

As college students we are constantly being told how important internships are to our future career, but often, heavy course loads and on campus involvement makes it difficult to balance an internship during the school year. Summer is the perfect time to dive head first into an internship and get some valuable experience. So, how do you find that elusive summer internship?

To start, check out HireACane.com. After logging in with your CaneID information, click on the “Jobs” tab and start searching. Use different keywords to narrow down your search and find exactly what you’re looking for.

Can’t find your perfect internship on HireACane? Here’s where you might have to do a bit more work. All of the internships and jobs I’ve ever gotten have come from just doing a Google search and seeing where that takes me. I follow tons of organizations in my field on Facebook and Twitter, and constantly keep up to date on what they’re doing to see if they’re places I’d be interested in working at, and sometimes they’ll even put job/internship postings on Facebook.  

So what if you find your dream company, but there’s nothing posted about internship openings? While many websites will have a “careers” or “internships” page, you might have to dig a little further with others to find the opportunity you’re looking for. You can send a letter of inquiry to a company expressing your interest in working for them and asking if they have anything available. They might turn you down but you really have nothing to lose!

Once you find the internship opportunities you want to apply for, come to Toppel for walk-in advising and we can help craft the perfect cover letters and resumes for those applications. Before you know it, you’ll have an awesome summer internship lined up!