Getting an internship is quite a challenge, especially when it is your first internship ever and there is a pandemic going on. Fortunately for the people still looking, I will give a little insight on how I got the best internship for me.
In the beginning of November I started the journey of looking for an internship. I spend hours upon hours looking at all the different internships, their job descriptions and the length of the internship period. I started to create lists, for every internship that seemed interesting to me I wrote down what to me were the six most important elements of a possible internship: where is the internship; when do I start the internship; how many months is the internship; how many days/ hours per week is the internship; is an internship research possible and what is the job description of the internship. After writing down these main elements, I started making a pro and con list for my top ten internships and selected five to write a letter to.
Writing the cover letter is something that I invested a lot of time in, but in the end I did get a response from almost all of them. My tip to you is to adjust every cover letter to the company you would like to intern for. Even though it takes a lot of time and you and your skills will not particularly change, companies always appreciate it if you mention the skills that will apply for their company and job description. After that I have sent out the five letters.
After hearing back from almost all companies I planned the internship interviews. In the end I had internship interviews at three different companies. The thing I really advise you to also do is to really do your research on the company you want to intern for and the job description. If they give you any assignments beforehand, make sure you spend enough time on that too. This will get you a lot of points before even starting the actual interview.
After all the preparation it is time to start the interview. For the interview, just make sure you have your laptop charged and your WiFi on, and of course try to relax.
After all the interviews, the waiting period starts. What I did after my interviews, is create a list from least favorite place you want to intern at to favorite. In the end this will help you determine whether you want to wait for a response before saying yes to another internship. Eventually, I first heard back from what I thought to be my number three spot to intern at, and I asked them if I could answer them back within a week, knowing I would get an answer from my number one spot by then. As they agreed, I was able to wait for my number one spot. In the end, my number one spot asked me to be their intern, which means that I made the right decision by waiting. Now I namely have the best internship for me, at M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment, a sponsorship and marketing agency located in Amsterdam.
This was my experience on getting an internship, hopefully it can help anyone in the near future.
