Yes, getting an internship after college is definitely possible. In actuality, 31% of all students who secure internships do so after completing their undergraduate studies.
Although the majority of students begin their internships while in college, many people begin theirs afterward, sometimes even six years after donning their cap and gown. Don’t worry about missing the boat if you’re thinking about getting one for yourself. When deciding what to do after college, this is a logical course to take.
When four years of rigorous study are over, getting an internship after college isn’t always the first thing that comes to mind. After the strain of final exams and assignments, you’re probably worn out and may be regaining your mental health.
Please read on.
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Can You Do Internships After College?
After graduating, you are able to complete an internship. It is erroneously believed that internships are only available to current students. This is untrue, though.
Although there may not be as many internships available to graduates as there are to students, they are still open to them. You need to know where to look if you want to do an internship after graduation.
Specific internship programs are developed by a number of organizations and businesses for recent college graduates.
Due to a lack of qualified workers, they frequently use these internships as temporary solutions. Internships for recent graduates can aid in luring talent to businesses.
The company or organization may choose interns who have shown the capacity to perform well in particular roles at the conclusion of the internship.
At the end of the program, even if you don’t land a job, you will have accumulated significant on-the-job experience.
Along with improving your resume, the experience will give you skills that are applicable to the industry and may increase your chances of landing your first job.
Read about Does It Matter What College You Go To: When Talking To Job Search
Why Do An Internship After College?
Here are some of the reasons to do an internship after you graduate:
Discover the Right Career for You
When you graduate from college, it’s common to not know what to do. If you fall into this category, finding your core competencies and your next career path through an internship is one of the best ways to move forward.
You can experience the workplace of various companies and learn about various fields through internships.
After completing your internships, you’ll probably discover what you enjoy doing. So an internship might be the perfect fit for you if you are unsure of your career or profession.
It’s crucial to fully immerse yourself in the experience and seize every opportunity if you want an internship to aid in determining your career path.
It could be gaining new knowledge, developing new techniques, assuming leadership responsibilities, or assisting in streamlining operational processes.
You will learn more about your core competencies and the career that best suits your interests as a result of these experiences.
Build Your Resume
For many recent graduates, a lack of experience is a significant barrier to employment.
An internship after graduation is an easy way to add job-specific skills and professional accomplishments to your resume if you have no or little work experience.
Internships provide chances to learn and develop in a professional environment, allowing you to strengthen your resume, impress employers, and stand out from less experienced but similarly qualified candidates.
Grow a Professional Network
After college, internships can also help you make contacts in the business world that will be very helpful to you as you progress in your career.
If you seize the chances that an internship offers, you can establish your competence as a worker who can produce results.
You will gain the respect of more seasoned coworkers, and you might even use your contacts to land the job you want after the internship.
Become Productive
As you look for your dream job after graduation, doing an internship is a good way to stay productive and learn new things.
With an internship, you can make a significant contribution to a company, advance professionally, and avoid the monotony and drudgery of staying at home after the exciting and busy college years.
Learn from Experts
Graduate internships offer a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work with seasoned experts in your field.
It gives you the chance to learn from industry leaders who can provide insightful advice on how to succeed in business and realize your professional ambitions.
Utilize the chance to stand out, form connections, and gain as much knowledge as you can to make the most of your internship.
Should You Get An Internship After College?
We’re often told that internships are natural stepping stones to full-time jobs—and it often can be—but that’s not always true. There are many different types of internships, some of which are excellent opportunities, and many others which are subpar ones.
With 53% of recent graduates being unemployed or underemployed, however, it can be a good idea in some circumstances, even if it’s unpaid
You want to acquire real work experience from an internship, not to become a glorified coffee runner, of course.
There’s good news on that front: the research suggests that graduates who pursue internships do see benefits, both for their job searches and for their long-term career development, including liberal arts graduates. According to the data, taking a gap year after college will not offer as many advantages as an internship.
- They locate decent jobs more quickly.
- In their following position, they receive higher pay.
- In arbitrary evaluations, they score higher.
How to Get An Internship?
Getting an internship is your first taste of the real world after graduating college.
If you have no real experience in the field you want to be working in, an internship is an ideal way to determine if the said field is indeed the right fit for you or not.
Internships occasionally open doors to full-time positions or present opportunities for greater advancement.
So, they’re a great way to get your foot in the door and get some real, hands-on experience.
Now, you might not necessarily be doing a lot of important things in the beginning, but at least you’ll be working with professionals and colleagues who will.
On your first internship, the number one thing you should be focusing on is learning.
As an intern, your main goals should be:
- Talking to colleagues to figure out who does what (and how!)
- Learning how organizations work as a whole
- Soaking up as much knowledge about your field as possible (and deciding if it’s actually something you want to pursue)
But keep in mind that you might decide the field isn’t for you in many cases. Or, occasionally, despite your best efforts, you won’t be given a full-time job offer after the internship.
Even in these situations, the internship may still be extremely beneficial to you in the long run.
After all, you’re not limited to that one specific role you start out with.
You can use your newfound knowledge for a variety of things.
For instance, you could use that experience as a springboard for a new endeavor, such as an internship in a different industry or a position that requires little to no experience.
Create a Convincing Resume
Your resume must be strong if you want to get that dream internship.
Since there is such a high demand for internships. Every day, the HR managers receive hundreds or even thousands of student resumes.
Since you have no work experience, you must somehow differentiate yourself from the competition.
Even so, how is this possible?
Glad you asked.
Although the experience section of a resume is crucial, it is not required (especially for students or recent graduates).
Even if you’ve never had a job before, you can still make a very strong resume.
Convince the HR Manager With a Cover Letter
The next step is to perfect your cover letter after you have your resume down.
Cover letters can be terrifying for recent graduates – what do you even write when you don’t have a lot of experience and hardly covered your resume to reach 1 page?
Most people list their work experience and other qualifications – but what should you do?
Look at it this way.
If you recently graduated, you should seize every opportunity to advance and win over the HR manager.
A good cover letter can make your application stand out and be the final push to land every internship you apply for.
The main idea is this: with the internship, your main goal is to learn and gain some real practical experience.
With the cover letter – you show your motivation for the job and the company.
You don’t need to mention ANY experience (especially if you have none), as long as you provide solid reasons as to why you want the job you’re applying for (which you should).
So, exactly how do you justify your motivation?
For starters, you cannot use the excuse that you love not having a job.
In simple terms, you need to explain WHY you love the job and WHY you would love to work there.
The key is to sound authentic. So, do some research, and provide specific examples as to what motivates you.
Most people just make up information or use trendy terms at this stage.
But let’s face it, just about everyone is “motivated to work hard and passionate about [insert position here]”.
Notice how unnatural that sounds?
A mile away, HR managers can tell when someone is making things up after going through hundreds of these.
Make sure you’re not rushing and actually take your time with the research if you want to stand out.
If you know what you’re going to be doing in advance (hint: check the job ad) use that specific language and examples in your cover letter too.
Consequently, let’s say that as an example, your internship will involve social media marketing. The responsibilities of the position are listed in the job description. Something like :
- “Creating and scheduling social media posts across all platforms”
- “Helping develop social media campaigns and optimizing Facebook Ads”
- “Writing clean and engaging copy for social media posts”
You understand the point, right?
You can pretty much count on finding specific information about what you’ll be doing in the job description.
With that information at hand, you can now research the subject and learn more about what that would entail.
Simply conduct some online research to find the appropriate information.
Here’s a good example of what a cover letter looks like:
What does this resume do well?
First, it’s written from a soon-to-graduate college student, who does not have a lot of working experience. As a result, he says nothing about his experience.
Instead, he describes his education background (major, minor, and background), and why he’s interested in that agency specifically (government campaigns, opportunity to learn what he’s interested in).
Finally, he mentions any other relevant experience (in this case, another internship), specific skills (Adobe Creative Suite, Photoshop, and InDesign), and ends by providing his contact information.
You see how easy that is?
If you want more examples and inspiration, check out some other cover letter examples for 2022.
Last but not least, it should go without saying that your cover letter should be customized for the particular internship opportunity.
But in order to do that, you must first identify the ideal internship for which to apply.
Find the Right Internship Opportunities
Now that you know how to submit an application that gets results, it’s time to look for the right companies and the right internship openings.
The fact is that there are many different job openings out there; the key is identifying the one for which you would be the best candidate.
However, you probably won’t advance if you start sending your resume to every internship opportunity.
So, the best places to look for an internship include:
- Job and internship boards
- Job fairs
- Cold emailing the company directly
And now, how to carry out each.
Job and Internship Boards
You can start applying for internships on any number of job boards thanks to the power of the internet.
There is just so many job boards to choose from, which is the issue with that. So, starting to look for and apply to boards one by one would simply take too much time and result in very few actual openings.
And if that wasn’t enough, there are also countless people competing against you, for the same spot.
To beat the competition though, make sure you’re filtering the job boards to your location. You are at least only up against rivals from your area when you do it this way.
Here’s a list of some of the best job listings boards you can find an internship on:
- Glassdoor – traditional job-board with a twist – you can read reviews on employers and decide whether a specific company is right for you
- Indeed
- All-sizes startups can post jobs on the job board AngelList. If you’re the entrepreneurial type, you might want to try interning at a startup
- WayUp – jobs, internships, part-time positions from startups to Fortune 500 companies
- Google (search for “internship + (your location)”
- Google for Jobs
- ZipRecruiter
- Jobs in the tech sector are called dice. Find salary predictions, advice on choosing a career path, and more.
- Idealist is a search engine for everything related to career development, including jobs, internships, volunteer opportunities, and more.
- LinkUp
- InternshipFinder
- Facebook groups – look for local job fairs and groups for university career development.
- ErasmusIntern: a current student or a recent graduate? You might still be qualified for an Erasmus internship if you have financial aid!
Both regular jobs and internships are available on each of these websites. It goes without saying that the majority of them also offer useful filtering options (you can filter by industry, job type, and so forth).
Make sure you’re regularly checking for new positions on the aforementioned websites while applying for jobs.
If you persevere, finding that fantastic internship should only take a short while.
Job Fairs
Job fairs might seem scary at first, since they require you to be physically there and network.
However, if done correctly, they can actually open up a lot of doors and give you immediate access.
On college and school campuses, job fairs and openings are likely to be present.
Do your research on who will be presenting there the next time you see one, and make sure to spend some time speaking with the hiring managers there.
You don’t even have to be good at networking, as long as you go there, and show you’re motivated to start (should be easier in person), you’re likely to come out of the job fair with a few leads.
If you are familiar with the HR manager’s role and responsibilities, it will be simpler to establish a rapport with them.
As a result, they will respect that you took your time, and if you continue to stand out, you will have a good chance of getting that call back.
While networking might seem scary at first, as long as you come prepared – it’s going to be a breeze.
So, before you got to the next job fair, see who’s going to be there, research to see if you’d like to intern for any of them, and then, get there prepared (ideally, with resume in hand).
Cold Emailing the Company Directly
Cold email is still very much a thing.
What’s so great about this approach is that if you have a company in mind you’d like to intern for, and even if they don’t offer any openings, if done well, you can still get your foot in the door.
Sounds simpler said than done?
Well, the procedure is actually quite simple.
You find the manager’s email address or contact information and ask for an internship.
Yes, in order to do this, you must be very direct. No, it’s not rude.
If anything, this approach shows the recruiter that you’re self-driven and your initiative.
To find companies you’d be into, simply google “(company type) + (location)” for some companies doing business in your region.
For example, you can Google “social media marketing agencies“, which will bring up a number of agencies you could email, or you can switch to the Maps view for a list of agencies near you.
Sending an email to one of the decision-makers is required once you have a company in mind. If LinkedIn doesn’t yield their email, try looking it up on their personal website.
When emailing, make sure you’re polite, brief, and explain your situation in a very straightforward manner.
No need to recount your entire life’s events.
Your email needs to be a summary of your cover letter.
Learn key facts about your agency in mind, what attracts you to them, and then explain your motivations in the email, while attaching your resume inside.
Spend 1-2 sentences introducing yourself, and share one of your biggest achievements that can help the company
The purpose of the email is to convince them to meet with you so you can further explain your situation.
Once your score the interview, here’s what you do next.
Ace the Upcoming Interview
This is it.
This is the culmination of everything and the last obstacle between you and the internship.
If you made it this far, your resume and cover letter both were a hit. The HR manager must think highly of you if they responded to your email.
It’s now up to you to deliver on those promises and demonstrate your capabilities.
Are you ready?
If not, don’t be concerned. In actuality, most interviewers use the same set of standard questions.
Yes, that’s accurate, and it means that with a little bit of preparation, you’ll be going into the interview with complete confidence.
However, that does not imply that you should memorize your response because you will never be able to foresee their questions. Instead, prepare a broad outline of your response.
Read about How To Respond To An Interview Email?
Make a Good Impression in Your Internship
There is no magic formula for producing quality work, and cutting corners will only hurt you in the long run. Performance usually comes down to these factors:
- Every day, arrive a little early—even if it’s only by 5–10 minutes.
- Unless you have that luxury—and not everyone does—don’t be the first to leave.
- Don’t just nod and tune out; pay close attention and make inquiries.
- Practice is necessary if you want to perform well at work.
- Contribute in modest but significant ways, such as by capturing processes in writing.
- Support other team members however you can to become the office’s “team player.”
- To get feedback from your boss, set up brief, regular touchpoints. Simple, casual conversations taking place over slack or at a desk.
- Make an effort to comprehend how your actions contribute to the company’s bottom line. Your concern for issues outside of your own position is evident from this.
Following college, this is how to succeed in your internship.
The decision to pursue an internship after college depends on your capacity to find one and your ability to support yourself while doing so. Finding out whether the internships you have available are worthwhile will pay off because everyone needs money to live. Consult with trusted friends and family members about it before formulating a plan.
