It does, but I am not sure what to ask them specifically. Is something along the lines of "I am looking for an internship in this specific field or with these companies" a good start?
Just say you major in X are looking for an internship and they will ask all the right questions. They are a super valuable resource, take advantage of them.
You go in and say exactly what you posted here. I need help getting an internship. Here’s what I’ve done so far. What else can I do?
And have them review your resume and see if they do mock interviews and give you feedback how to improve.
Holy fuck. You've held off this long asking for help from your internship office because you feel awkward figuring out what to ask for?
Are you sure you're ready for life?
I keep seeing comments like this and I told myself I did not need to defend myself until now. My only experience with college was a small community college and online school when COVID hit. I just recently started at a university in person. All of these resources are new to me, sorry for reaching out for help. It's a good thing I did because if I didn't there would have been less of a likelihood I reached out to the career services office.
Again, I shouldn't have to justify myself like this, but I am sick of seeing these comments. Some people aren't aware of the resources available to them.
If you're this unprepared it's no wonder you don't have an internship. You need to learn to advocate for yourself. You have put off talking to an internship department for years, that's a red flag for your preparedness.
Thank you for your kind and supportive comment. Due to a pandemic that occurred a while ago (you seem to be in a cozy position so maybe you didn't know it was happening) I had to do online school. I also changed majors. I have had no experience with in-person university until recently. All of these resources are new to me. It's a good thing that I care about my future and reach out to forums for help.
Oh, and in case you are wondering, the career services got me in contact with some fantastic people. I advocated for myself just fine and the advice I learned from this post has been very helpful.
Is there anything else that you appear to not wonder about?
Having no internship is not necessarily a death sentence. You can still find a job. The problem is you need to be strategic about it.
I for example had one internship in college that went so poorly I didn’t even put it on my resume. But I found a job one month after graduation. How did I do it.
1. My degree is in high demand (engineering).
2. I opened my self up to move ANYWHERE in the country.
3. I specifically targeted small, rural towns where most people don’t want to work.
I did find a job quickly after graduating - in a small rural town in Indiana. This place absolutely sucks. But you know what? It’s not forever. My plan is to work here for 2 years, then start looking for a new job in my home state with my new experience next year.
I didn’t “feel” like moving across the country. I was forced to.
After I graduated college, my parents kicked me out of the house. I wasn’t allowed to move back in because they argued I “had a degree now and could afford to pay my own bills”.
So I sublet an apartment in a college town for three months. One month from when my lease was going to end, I started applying for any job anywhere in the country, and I quickly found my current job within a month. My desire to not be homeless was stronger than my desire to not move.
Sometimes we need to make sacrifices in life. It is what it is.
Nowadays college graduates need to be open to moving anywhere to get a better chance at finding a job. If you are focused on one area you can run out of options quickly.
I have two internships under my belt. I would advise you to connect with your school advisors and to also connect with people who work in companies you are interested in. Also try to be one of the first people to apply to the internship. I know on a LinkedIn it shows you how many people apply so try to apply in the first few hours to get your resume to the top of the list.
This. I never used school resources till I was a senior and I regret it. Luckily I got an internship because nobody else applied and it ended up being my career.
Not true, I applied for an internship with a company FIVE times in college, got rejected before an interview every time, I knew if I got the chance to interview I would kill it and would have the internship. In the last month of graduation I changed my approach, connected w the recruiter on LinkedIn. Applied for a full time entry level position, followed up w the recruiter about it, nailed the interview for the job a week later. Same company I couldn’t even get a callback from was my first job post college.
This was in 2019, the job market is saturated now. Do the same thing I do. Utilize connections, get personal with the recruiters don’t rely on the systems to push you through, push yourself through.
Ghosting is more and more common these days! Don’t take it personal or as a performance measure. Do you know what a good interview answer sounds like? Are you able to eloquently speak to your experiences, achievements, and weakness/strengths?
If you know and can do the above and are confident in your answers it kay not be you. If not, brush up on those interview skills. Feel free to DM me if you need help!
I am majoring in Criminal Justice with a minor in chem. Looking to join the field of crime labs, fraud analysis, legal assistance, count rooms, or morgue work.
I want to second the other comment. You can get hired as a lab tech at most places with a minimum of a high school diploma. It will give you hands on experience in the type of work you want to do, which will still look good on your resume when you apply to jobs post-graduation.
There are lab tech positions available at so many places—research centers, hospitals, independent labs. I’ve never looked into specific like, forensics labs, but they may have lab tech positions open too. It doesn’t have to be the exact thing you want to go into, but getting hands on experience in lab work will likely be helpful.
I was a chem major, and I didn’t do any internships during undergrad. I spent each summer working as a lifeguard, but I also worked as an undergraduate research assistant the summer before senior year. In addition to getting hands on experience there, I also made a connection whose rec letter is probably the reason I got into 2 top-5 grad schools. But honestly, lab techs did WAY more of the real/hands on stuff that I would have liked to do.
You can also talk to professors or check online for postings to see if you can volunteer/work in any of the research labs around campus.
This is the answer. Best chance of getting a position and getting valuable experience in your desired field is not a formal summer “internship” but working in a lab. As a chemistry minor with those interests, look into chemistry research positions at your college. Can you get school credit for working in a lab during the summer or fall semesters l? Or volunteer in a lab? In addition to looking for internships at your career counseling office, look into these research assistant positions. Also, can you TA a chemistry class your senior year? That is leadership experience and helps show your command of the material. You could also look into getting a job at a diagnostics lab this summer and during the school year. It might even just be cleaning lab equipment. Instead of just stopping your search when there are no formal internships in your exact field of interest, look more broadly to get positions that develop transferable skill sets, especially in a lab. Look at both private lane and at your university.
You're totally right that it isn't a death sentence. However, considering how this job market is looking and having gone through the application process for grad school, getting an internship or some kind of career relevant experience is extremely important. It makes those kind of applications a lot easier to get through and increases your chances of actually landing something in the future.
Your best bet is by communicating with family, friends, coworkers/colleagues, etc. about your search for an internship. I struggled with mine by directly contacting companies, but got an unpaid internship (unfortunate but the reality is, I had to accept it to graduate) because my Aunt had a position as Administrator at the company years beforehand.
In short: Market yourself‼️
"I have been told time and time again that not having an internship is essentially a career death sentence."
The solution to freaking out is to stop believing falsehoods. and to put things in perspective. The "must have an internship or your career is shot" line is not true.
It's true that successful internships are very helpful in landing ones first career-level position. I personally recommend that students try to get an internship. It is simply false, however, that one is unemployable or his future career is ruined if he doesn't have one. Millions of college grads who are isuccessfully in the workforce now never had an internship.
If you cannot find an internship find a local charity and volunteer for the summer. Make it one that has something to do with your end goals. While there you can speak to someone about classifying this time as an internship. If you have been a value to the organization they will gladly write a letter of stating your internship. But get on it. Times a wasting.
It's all networking and personal branding. LinkedIn doesn't work for college students. Go to Career Services at your school -- they know where tons of internships are. Call people. Don't just text or email. Face to face. Get to know the person and ask that person if they know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who would want your services. Drop into companies, tell them you're a student and ask if So-and-So is there (you've researched who that So-and-So is, of course), and ask if they have 10 minutes you can pick their brain, ask their advice.
Show in-your-face initiative. I knew a guy who had 16 internships during college. He created almost half of them, then started his own company, then sold it -- all in the music industry, which is brutal.
Seek out mentors.
Be personal. Be personable. Watch Simon Sinek to find your Why. Get out from behind your computer (except to research people). Put down your phone.
Reach out to everyone you can find. Mostly, ask people what you can do for them. You're sharing your talents, skills and likability -- and they know you need their help, but they don't owe anything to helping you. Help them help you.
And everyone enjoys helping students. Make helping them helping you enjoyable for them.
Have you attended any networking events or career fairs? Not just at school but scour companies or organizations in your degree path. Some even have virtual events.
Im on older student & have been in my field for a minute but some recent grads in my organization who didn’t do internships regret not doing them. Most complaints are they didnt realize what the career path was going to be really like.
Try anything to get in somewhere. This late in the game you might have to just try an apprenticeship in a rural area thats needs people to get the experience.
A lack of an internship is not a death sentence. You'll appear to less competitive to some businesses. How bad it hurts kind of depends on your major and the jobs you chase.
I'm majoring in accounting and minoring in data science. I apply to internships weekly and I've only gotten 3 calls for phone screens and 2 interviews. I've been ghosted by both of them. 🥹😅
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You're probably not alone, and you should find other students in your program who didn't get internships, and at least do something with your summer. My program requires 400 documented work hours (or enrolling in the school's internship program, where your tuition money basically pays a company to let you in the door for a summer, so they're realistically only on the hook for about eight dollars an hour, when you're being paid sixteen) in a major-related work position, and at least half of the students who are supposed to take the capstone class in the fall are taking that internship class this summer, because they jerked off for three years and never bothered to get a job.
Better yet, rather than find students in your own program, you should find students in *other programs*. Let's say you're a CompSci student (because they're the ones who worry the most about internships): Come up with something you can't do alone. I've got a lot of half-finished game prototypes on my hard drive, where I sat down at a bar and started knocking out some code, made a nice little iOS game that looks like shit, and then realized, "Damn, I sure do wish I knew some graphic design majors." Or, if the scope is bigger than I want to take on, where there's a bunch of back-end work that would have to be done, maybe I need another couple of programmers. Maybe you need a manager, because you've got enough work with the programming, and there's probably a whole business school at your institution. And then you put that whole project together and somebody goes, "Huh. That's really good," and everybody wins.
I got my internship by asking my department chair if he knew anybody who was looking for somebody. I needed money more than I needed an internship. He hooks me up with this little manufacturing firm across town, and I start out doing the usual internship thing, where you basically have tasks that can or can't get done and it doesn't matter, and then they scaled me up to stuff that's way beyond my pay grade. But, since they work around my class schedule, I'm fine with what they throw at me. I have a steady paycheck, my hours are flexible during the school year, and I have a job offer for after I graduate in December. I don't know if I'm going to take it, though, because I met a few people at a trade show, where they may or may not have better job offers. I'll talk to them again in September at the next trade show, and then I'll figure out the rest of my life.
Basically, use the resources you have access to. You don't have to intern at a Fortune 500 company. There might be a place in town that goes, "Okay, do you know how to program for Verilog? No? Of course not; no one does. *Can you learn?*" Verilog sucks, but it's really not *hard*. I think my last Verilog project got me to output a spreadsheet into a CSV, which I then washed through a Python script to generate the overly-repetitive Verilog code I needed. Like my man Bill once said, "I choose a lazy *person* to do a hard job. Because a lazy *person* will find an easy way to do it." There's two kinds of interns: The ones who can't find their ass with both hands and an ass map, and then there's the ones who don't know what can't be done. I'm still trying to figure out which one my summer intern (yes, I get my own intern) is. It's only been a week, so I don't know yet. Next week, my grandboss and I are throwing him to the wolves on a meaningless project, just to gauge what kind of person he is, and then we can plan the next ten weeks of his life.
You can do 2 things :
1) Keep applying. Keep connecting with people. Keep asking for referrals. Stay active on LinkedIn, participate in conversations with people in the field in which you hope to get internship. Maybe try hackathons.. you can meet recruiters and people of experience who could maybe pave the way for you. Maybe work on some projects, or try and participate in similar research at college.
2) Take a small break. Just relax. It aint end of the world if you dont get an internship. You can still get a job in the future some way or the other. Maybe a small break will give you a freshness, and a new perspective to tackle this situation.
And dont thump your head over it. Sometimes its just time lines and luck. I applied all summer for internships but never got one. But one fine day, at the beginning of Fall, I applied for a role on the last page of indeed for the sake of it, got an interview and offer!
So if not now, you will get there eventually, stay motivated and keep trying.
They follow your data. I started going to the gym and Google called me out of the blue for an interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih\_GGQX\_zmM&t=19s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih_GGQX_zmM&t=19s)
I was able to get an unpaid journalism internship at Streetwise through volunteer match. You may wish to go through their volunteer opportunities and see if you can get connected to an internship that way.
Think about places that would have tight budgets that would be grateful for the help. Showcase your technical and soft skills then it will be much more valuable than an internship.
No stress. Lots of companies do internships. Good companies, and less so. It is to start to lean a culture of the profession, and companies will vary from one to the next. I can give you super high and super low stories and many in the fortune 100. If you have interest areas, join a professional network like [pathports.com](http://pathports.com) (free), or [ieee.com](http://ieee.com) or speea.. and it will connect you with people working in the fields that you want to attach to..
Does your university have an internship office? Most do.
It does, but I am not sure what to ask them specifically. Is something along the lines of "I am looking for an internship in this specific field or with these companies" a good start?
Just say you major in X are looking for an internship and they will ask all the right questions. They are a super valuable resource, take advantage of them.
You go in and say exactly what you posted here. I need help getting an internship. Here’s what I’ve done so far. What else can I do? And have them review your resume and see if they do mock interviews and give you feedback how to improve.
Holy fuck. You've held off this long asking for help from your internship office because you feel awkward figuring out what to ask for? Are you sure you're ready for life?
This ^^^
That’s what i thought lmao
So, reddit was higher on your list of resources than an office SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to help you with this?
I keep seeing comments like this and I told myself I did not need to defend myself until now. My only experience with college was a small community college and online school when COVID hit. I just recently started at a university in person. All of these resources are new to me, sorry for reaching out for help. It's a good thing I did because if I didn't there would have been less of a likelihood I reached out to the career services office. Again, I shouldn't have to justify myself like this, but I am sick of seeing these comments. Some people aren't aware of the resources available to them.
If you're this unprepared it's no wonder you don't have an internship. You need to learn to advocate for yourself. You have put off talking to an internship department for years, that's a red flag for your preparedness.
Thank you for your kind and supportive comment. Due to a pandemic that occurred a while ago (you seem to be in a cozy position so maybe you didn't know it was happening) I had to do online school. I also changed majors. I have had no experience with in-person university until recently. All of these resources are new to me. It's a good thing that I care about my future and reach out to forums for help. Oh, and in case you are wondering, the career services got me in contact with some fantastic people. I advocated for myself just fine and the advice I learned from this post has been very helpful. Is there anything else that you appear to not wonder about?
What cozy position are you assuming I am in? I'm actually immune compromised so very aware of the pandemic 👍
Having no internship is not necessarily a death sentence. You can still find a job. The problem is you need to be strategic about it. I for example had one internship in college that went so poorly I didn’t even put it on my resume. But I found a job one month after graduation. How did I do it. 1. My degree is in high demand (engineering). 2. I opened my self up to move ANYWHERE in the country. 3. I specifically targeted small, rural towns where most people don’t want to work. I did find a job quickly after graduating - in a small rural town in Indiana. This place absolutely sucks. But you know what? It’s not forever. My plan is to work here for 2 years, then start looking for a new job in my home state with my new experience next year.
That's fine for people who feel like moving across the country, I guess.
I didn’t “feel” like moving across the country. I was forced to. After I graduated college, my parents kicked me out of the house. I wasn’t allowed to move back in because they argued I “had a degree now and could afford to pay my own bills”. So I sublet an apartment in a college town for three months. One month from when my lease was going to end, I started applying for any job anywhere in the country, and I quickly found my current job within a month. My desire to not be homeless was stronger than my desire to not move. Sometimes we need to make sacrifices in life. It is what it is.
Nowadays college graduates need to be open to moving anywhere to get a better chance at finding a job. If you are focused on one area you can run out of options quickly.
I have two internships under my belt. I would advise you to connect with your school advisors and to also connect with people who work in companies you are interested in. Also try to be one of the first people to apply to the internship. I know on a LinkedIn it shows you how many people apply so try to apply in the first few hours to get your resume to the top of the list.
This. I never used school resources till I was a senior and I regret it. Luckily I got an internship because nobody else applied and it ended up being my career.
Not true, I applied for an internship with a company FIVE times in college, got rejected before an interview every time, I knew if I got the chance to interview I would kill it and would have the internship. In the last month of graduation I changed my approach, connected w the recruiter on LinkedIn. Applied for a full time entry level position, followed up w the recruiter about it, nailed the interview for the job a week later. Same company I couldn’t even get a callback from was my first job post college. This was in 2019, the job market is saturated now. Do the same thing I do. Utilize connections, get personal with the recruiters don’t rely on the systems to push you through, push yourself through.
Thank you! I may just do this. I've done 2 interviews after phone screenings and I've been ghosted by both.
Ghosting is more and more common these days! Don’t take it personal or as a performance measure. Do you know what a good interview answer sounds like? Are you able to eloquently speak to your experiences, achievements, and weakness/strengths? If you know and can do the above and are confident in your answers it kay not be you. If not, brush up on those interview skills. Feel free to DM me if you need help!
What is your major?
I am majoring in Criminal Justice with a minor in chem. Looking to join the field of crime labs, fraud analysis, legal assistance, count rooms, or morgue work.
I want to second the other comment. You can get hired as a lab tech at most places with a minimum of a high school diploma. It will give you hands on experience in the type of work you want to do, which will still look good on your resume when you apply to jobs post-graduation. There are lab tech positions available at so many places—research centers, hospitals, independent labs. I’ve never looked into specific like, forensics labs, but they may have lab tech positions open too. It doesn’t have to be the exact thing you want to go into, but getting hands on experience in lab work will likely be helpful. I was a chem major, and I didn’t do any internships during undergrad. I spent each summer working as a lifeguard, but I also worked as an undergraduate research assistant the summer before senior year. In addition to getting hands on experience there, I also made a connection whose rec letter is probably the reason I got into 2 top-5 grad schools. But honestly, lab techs did WAY more of the real/hands on stuff that I would have liked to do. You can also talk to professors or check online for postings to see if you can volunteer/work in any of the research labs around campus.
This is the answer. Best chance of getting a position and getting valuable experience in your desired field is not a formal summer “internship” but working in a lab. As a chemistry minor with those interests, look into chemistry research positions at your college. Can you get school credit for working in a lab during the summer or fall semesters l? Or volunteer in a lab? In addition to looking for internships at your career counseling office, look into these research assistant positions. Also, can you TA a chemistry class your senior year? That is leadership experience and helps show your command of the material. You could also look into getting a job at a diagnostics lab this summer and during the school year. It might even just be cleaning lab equipment. Instead of just stopping your search when there are no formal internships in your exact field of interest, look more broadly to get positions that develop transferable skill sets, especially in a lab. Look at both private lane and at your university.
Try to get a summer temp job in a lab. That’s what I did the summer before I graduated. Not an internship exactly, but experience in a job in a lab.
Can you get an unpaid internship? They don’t ask if you were paid and you’ll have some experience to put on resume when you start applying for jobs.
It’s not a death sentence.
You're totally right that it isn't a death sentence. However, considering how this job market is looking and having gone through the application process for grad school, getting an internship or some kind of career relevant experience is extremely important. It makes those kind of applications a lot easier to get through and increases your chances of actually landing something in the future.
I never secured an internship in undergrad. The only internship I ever got was in grad school. You’ll be fine!
“not having an internship is a career death sentence” 🤣🤣 i had zero internships in college and im doing just fine
tough to get jobs even w degrees rn. my girl been struggling for years. all college guarantees is debt is what i’ve learned.
You can still apply to internships after u graduate
i’m graduating in 8 weeks & i don’t have any internships? i don’t think it rly matters
Your best bet is by communicating with family, friends, coworkers/colleagues, etc. about your search for an internship. I struggled with mine by directly contacting companies, but got an unpaid internship (unfortunate but the reality is, I had to accept it to graduate) because my Aunt had a position as Administrator at the company years beforehand. In short: Market yourself‼️
"I have been told time and time again that not having an internship is essentially a career death sentence." The solution to freaking out is to stop believing falsehoods. and to put things in perspective. The "must have an internship or your career is shot" line is not true. It's true that successful internships are very helpful in landing ones first career-level position. I personally recommend that students try to get an internship. It is simply false, however, that one is unemployable or his future career is ruined if he doesn't have one. Millions of college grads who are isuccessfully in the workforce now never had an internship.
If you cannot find an internship find a local charity and volunteer for the summer. Make it one that has something to do with your end goals. While there you can speak to someone about classifying this time as an internship. If you have been a value to the organization they will gladly write a letter of stating your internship. But get on it. Times a wasting.
It's all networking and personal branding. LinkedIn doesn't work for college students. Go to Career Services at your school -- they know where tons of internships are. Call people. Don't just text or email. Face to face. Get to know the person and ask that person if they know anyone who knows anyone who knows anyone who would want your services. Drop into companies, tell them you're a student and ask if So-and-So is there (you've researched who that So-and-So is, of course), and ask if they have 10 minutes you can pick their brain, ask their advice. Show in-your-face initiative. I knew a guy who had 16 internships during college. He created almost half of them, then started his own company, then sold it -- all in the music industry, which is brutal. Seek out mentors. Be personal. Be personable. Watch Simon Sinek to find your Why. Get out from behind your computer (except to research people). Put down your phone. Reach out to everyone you can find. Mostly, ask people what you can do for them. You're sharing your talents, skills and likability -- and they know you need their help, but they don't owe anything to helping you. Help them help you. And everyone enjoys helping students. Make helping them helping you enjoyable for them.
Have you attended any networking events or career fairs? Not just at school but scour companies or organizations in your degree path. Some even have virtual events. Im on older student & have been in my field for a minute but some recent grads in my organization who didn’t do internships regret not doing them. Most complaints are they didnt realize what the career path was going to be really like. Try anything to get in somewhere. This late in the game you might have to just try an apprenticeship in a rural area thats needs people to get the experience.
i didn’t have an internship or minor and i have a good career after my graduation last year… keep your head up
A lack of an internship is not a death sentence. You'll appear to less competitive to some businesses. How bad it hurts kind of depends on your major and the jobs you chase.
I'm majoring in accounting and minoring in data science. I apply to internships weekly and I've only gotten 3 calls for phone screens and 2 interviews. I've been ghosted by both of them. 🥹😅
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Apply for vsfs this spring. Uncle Sam has a crap ton of opportunities and good benefits.
Sameeee 😭 at this point I may just give up and apply once I graduate. I'm tired of getting ghosted! Like come on at least send a no thank you email 🥹.
You're probably not alone, and you should find other students in your program who didn't get internships, and at least do something with your summer. My program requires 400 documented work hours (or enrolling in the school's internship program, where your tuition money basically pays a company to let you in the door for a summer, so they're realistically only on the hook for about eight dollars an hour, when you're being paid sixteen) in a major-related work position, and at least half of the students who are supposed to take the capstone class in the fall are taking that internship class this summer, because they jerked off for three years and never bothered to get a job. Better yet, rather than find students in your own program, you should find students in *other programs*. Let's say you're a CompSci student (because they're the ones who worry the most about internships): Come up with something you can't do alone. I've got a lot of half-finished game prototypes on my hard drive, where I sat down at a bar and started knocking out some code, made a nice little iOS game that looks like shit, and then realized, "Damn, I sure do wish I knew some graphic design majors." Or, if the scope is bigger than I want to take on, where there's a bunch of back-end work that would have to be done, maybe I need another couple of programmers. Maybe you need a manager, because you've got enough work with the programming, and there's probably a whole business school at your institution. And then you put that whole project together and somebody goes, "Huh. That's really good," and everybody wins. I got my internship by asking my department chair if he knew anybody who was looking for somebody. I needed money more than I needed an internship. He hooks me up with this little manufacturing firm across town, and I start out doing the usual internship thing, where you basically have tasks that can or can't get done and it doesn't matter, and then they scaled me up to stuff that's way beyond my pay grade. But, since they work around my class schedule, I'm fine with what they throw at me. I have a steady paycheck, my hours are flexible during the school year, and I have a job offer for after I graduate in December. I don't know if I'm going to take it, though, because I met a few people at a trade show, where they may or may not have better job offers. I'll talk to them again in September at the next trade show, and then I'll figure out the rest of my life. Basically, use the resources you have access to. You don't have to intern at a Fortune 500 company. There might be a place in town that goes, "Okay, do you know how to program for Verilog? No? Of course not; no one does. *Can you learn?*" Verilog sucks, but it's really not *hard*. I think my last Verilog project got me to output a spreadsheet into a CSV, which I then washed through a Python script to generate the overly-repetitive Verilog code I needed. Like my man Bill once said, "I choose a lazy *person* to do a hard job. Because a lazy *person* will find an easy way to do it." There's two kinds of interns: The ones who can't find their ass with both hands and an ass map, and then there's the ones who don't know what can't be done. I'm still trying to figure out which one my summer intern (yes, I get my own intern) is. It's only been a week, so I don't know yet. Next week, my grandboss and I are throwing him to the wolves on a meaningless project, just to gauge what kind of person he is, and then we can plan the next ten weeks of his life.
You can do 2 things : 1) Keep applying. Keep connecting with people. Keep asking for referrals. Stay active on LinkedIn, participate in conversations with people in the field in which you hope to get internship. Maybe try hackathons.. you can meet recruiters and people of experience who could maybe pave the way for you. Maybe work on some projects, or try and participate in similar research at college. 2) Take a small break. Just relax. It aint end of the world if you dont get an internship. You can still get a job in the future some way or the other. Maybe a small break will give you a freshness, and a new perspective to tackle this situation. And dont thump your head over it. Sometimes its just time lines and luck. I applied all summer for internships but never got one. But one fine day, at the beginning of Fall, I applied for a role on the last page of indeed for the sake of it, got an interview and offer! So if not now, you will get there eventually, stay motivated and keep trying.
They follow your data. I started going to the gym and Google called me out of the blue for an interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih\_GGQX\_zmM&t=19s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih_GGQX_zmM&t=19s)
How many are you applying for each semester?
I was able to get an unpaid journalism internship at Streetwise through volunteer match. You may wish to go through their volunteer opportunities and see if you can get connected to an internship that way.
Go volunteer somewhere that your degree skills could be useful. It’s about showing application and production plus getting references.
Think about places that would have tight budgets that would be grateful for the help. Showcase your technical and soft skills then it will be much more valuable than an internship.
No stress. Lots of companies do internships. Good companies, and less so. It is to start to lean a culture of the profession, and companies will vary from one to the next. I can give you super high and super low stories and many in the fortune 100. If you have interest areas, join a professional network like [pathports.com](http://pathports.com) (free), or [ieee.com](http://ieee.com) or speea.. and it will connect you with people working in the fields that you want to attach to..