This Monday the 26th InternMatch is rolling out a more streamlined search, hundreds of new Washington positions, and a slew of tools to help students manage the internship search process.
At InternMatch we have built our platform around two goals : offering the highest quality internship search experience on the web AND offering more opportunities and greater diversity of positions than can be found anywhere else.
When looking at the majority of resumes, there is a lot of room for improvement (if you are banging your head against the wall trying to figure out formatting, content, etc you are not alone)! This document reflects not only your qualifications, but it is a personal marketing piece: it announces to employers how detail oriented, how resourceful, and how professional you are. Do not settle for a resume that has great content but which you have not taken the time to properly format — many recruiters unfortunately will judge a resume by the cover.
Formatting can be one of the most frustrating components of resume creation (especially for the not so tech savvy), but it is a great way to put yourself ahead of the majority of candidates. First, nearly all recruiters state they prefer something that is clean and professional vs. lavish or stylized. Use a traditional font like Times New Roman or Arial and no colors please! Second, your resume will look better if you separate each section with a line. Bolded headers (and italicized sub headers), consistent indentation, and clearly delineated sections all help make the resume more intuitive in reviewing. Third, as undergraduates the goal should ALWAYS be to stick to one page unless you have done superhuman things in your undergraduate career. Even if you have a wealth of great experience, keeping it all to one page will make it punchy and that much more impressive.
This is a basic start, but we realize the time it takes to learn how to properly format a resume document and the frustration involved may force some students into taking breathing classes. So we have created a professional template which everyone can download and use. It is based on the ideal traits recruiters look for in student interns, and we are excited to offer this free help!
Here are great resume tips for you to take a look at!
Video of InternMatch and the Win/Win Network’s reception which included over 25 orgs and 25 students meeting, eating, and finding internship matches in a professional setting.
By Gabe Pelegrin
Greetings! I am Gabe Pelegrin, Marketing Analyst/ Intern here at InternMatch. I have been involved with the the InternMatch team since September 2009 while attending college. So far, joining the team has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Yesterday at noon eastern time the Economic Policy Institute released a report that looked at the unfair and often unpaid internship practices that help to perpetuate inequality in the job market. They followed the report up with a proposal that asked for initial federal funding of $500 million to financially support students in roughly 100,000 internships similar to the government’s incredibly popular (and overflowing) Americorps program, but with more flexibility. Like Americorps the supported positions were at non-profit organizations, but unlike Americorps the goal was to focus sponsorship on students with economic needs. This proposal in my mind should be fully supported for a number of reasons:
Looking forward to seeing how the proposal evolves — if you have any more information on the subject of unfair and unpaid internships, or economic benefits of government subsidizing of the internship experience, please send in your comments.
A strong internship program is one that helps an intern recognize not only what impact their individual tasks have, but link projects to the bigger picture and long term mission of an organization.
In my last blog post I mentioned that for a number of students the internship experience can be a somewhat awkward first trip into the job world and the idiosyncratic rituals of the office. If the college and the job worlds were two big circles in a venn diagram, internships fall into that center category, with college and professional mannerisms overlapping. We have noticed some interesting facts about how students apply to positions, occasionally bringing college habits into the job world. One big example: Late Night Applications!
Monitoring activity has been full of insight as we aggregate large scale application information for the first time ever. One noticeable contrast between interns and employers can be found in messaging and application process: nearly 50%of students applied to positions after 9 o clock and nearly every student applied for positions after 5 pm (end of business hours). While it is common for students to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning (either working or socializing), it’s interesting that most students don’t think about the difference between their college hours and that of a typical office. What kind of first impression do you think an employer gets when they see an email from John Doe with a time stamp at 4AM? John Doe are you going to be mature and awake throughout a day at the office? Not to mention most employers are typically swamped in the morning going through emails, so adding your resume to this batch is an easy way to get lost in the mix.
In thinking back to my internship applications I did not act much differently, and for the most part employers recognize and won’t hold such a detail against you. But, part of taking on an internship means consciously leaving behind college habits and learning as much as possible about the professional industry you want to make a career in. Maybe if you are applying for a position as a software developer (known for having nocturnal hours) applying at night is the status quo. What matters most is thinking about what the person who will be hiring you expects and looks for in an ideal internship candidate.
Recommendation: Apply for positions between the hours of one and four, when most employers are least busy and you can make the best impression.
People tend to relate first experiences to infantry and early childhood, in actuality first experiences occur throughout life– we just become better adapted and more experienced at responding to these new situations.
In my mind the internship is under-recognized as a first experience in a tremendously new and often idiosyncratic job world. A failure by employers to recognize the transitional role of the internship for students at times leads to a disconnect and an under-utilization of an intern’s skills. With 80% of college students interning once during their college years and 50% at least twice, this is roughly 2.58 million students who are juggling their college life with a very different professional working environment. For many students this means first staff meetings, first handshakes (instead of fist pounds), first networking events (instead of career fairs), first getting dressed up and sitting in an office all day long, and many more novel situations.
Interns have proven time and again to learn these new skills and embrace this new environment incredibly quickly– but with minimal investment or effort employers can really make this river crossing much easier. I wanted to post a few tips to make this first experience better for all parties:
Interns come into the work world with a range of experience– but for many it is a first foray into the job world which they will live in for the next 40 or 50 years. While some employers see the task of training a fresh out of school employee as daunting, the truth is by re-aligning your approach and being cognizant of your role as a teacher you will find 90% of interns learn quickly with minimal managerial buy-in. Those who make these adjustments will find even bigger rewards in the improved work flow of interns, and the potential for a long and successful partnership.
Signs are showing that the decade beginning with 2010 will bring on a large shift in the internship landscape — from being the domain of brand name businesses and organizations to mid-market and even small non-profit and start-up companies competing for the best and brightest students. Working on the front lines of the internship world I have seen this trend evolve due to a number of factors:
As job markets tighten students are increasingly viewing internships as an important prerequisite for future employment. With competition for brand name internship experience on the rise students and other intern applicants are now actively seeking positions at a wider range of organizations.
The barriers to finding and hosting interns are being lowered. Previously the gateways to finding interns consisted of expensive career fairs or other time intensive search processes; however, online platforms (like our own) and social media spaces are allowing small organizations to become proactive and competitive in their intern hunt.
A societal shift in the values and interests of the y-generation is occurring. Students are now the second largest volunteering demographic (behind baby boomers by a hair), and a recent 2007 study polling students found that a majority indicated the ethics of a company is more important than starting salary. Students today are growing up in a more global and open world then in the past and are looking to achieve a work-life balance not necessarily defined by big bucks and big names.
Finally, I would like to touch upon a change that is hard to quantify but easy to sense in the working world. Internships have become entirely mainstream. Intern programs are no longer seen as a form of bartering mentorship in order to help the son or daughter of friends and family, but are now being taken seriously by organizations to gain impactful part-time employees and to vet capable future employees. Competitive internship programs that understand how to deliver an interesting and valuable experience are cropping up at a number of less known organizations.
While fortune 500 companies, big financial institutions, and name brand firms will always attract top tier candidates with lucrative summer positions and a shiny badge on a successful applicants’ resume; in a more competitive job market experience is king. Oftentimes it is at the smaller organization where interns are getting thrown into the mix, running full fledged campaigns (from marketing, to sales and outreach, and other large scale projects), and finishing internships with new skills and confidence that offers a powerful leg up in the job market.
Look forward to our upcoming series diving deeper into the state of internships at start-up companies, and the state of non-profit internships.
This is the first video in InternMatch’s Student Stories video series.
