Difficulties of finding an internship
Finding the internship itself was the toughest thing about doing an internship for me. I felt like I started the search early enough, which was around 4 months before the start date. At first, I wanted to do an internship in something that I was passionate about, which was the music industry. But then I quickly realised that there were barely any internships offered in this area, and when I was able to find something, it was irrelevant to the communication science course. After that, I already knew that I wasn’t going to find an internship in the industry of my choice, so I was hoping to find an internship in an industry that could still be of interest, or at least in a respectable big company. So then I began to apply to a selected number of internships, which I felt I would enjoy, and all the big companies that offered internships in marketing and communication. But then I ran into the next problem; simply because nobody was replying, some big companies just sent an automated email when they already found a candidate, and smaller ones didn’t even bother to send an email. At that point, I was still writing my application tailored to each specific company, as I wasn’t applying for that many.
After failing again, I changed my application and was sending the same application to many more companies than before. I was applying for all the internships, which were more or less of some interest to me, and I finally started to get some interviews. But then I found out about the next problem, in most companies, there are multiple rounds of interviews and around 20-30 people competing for one spot. After not securing an internship after 3 months of searching, I lowered my expectations to the bare minimum. Now I was looking for any internship that was at least somewhat relevant for communication science study. I was applying for every internship that I saw on the internet, even some internships in other Dutch cities, because I was completely hopeless. One week before my start date, I finally managed to find an internship at a small diaper company. I had to take it because it was simply my only option, and I had to do an internship for my study programme. I wasn’t enjoying it at all, and it honestly felt like a waste of time. Simply because I was never interested in working in that business. I even lost a lot of motivation to work in a marketing area because of my internship experience. The main reason that I can point out about why it’s so difficult to find an internship in Amsterdam is that there are too many students and people in general who are looking for an internship, so there is too little supply to meet the huge demand. So start early and try to make connections beforehand with the companies where you want to pursue your internship.