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This is Part IV in our series on internships. If you haven’t already check out our earlier articles:

4 Reasons College Students Should Get An Internship
Small Versus Large Internships
Internship Pay: How Much and What Industries

Now that I’ve talked a little bit about what you can gain from internships and the things you should know about them, let’s talk about the process of applying for an internship.

If you are lucky, then the companies you want to work for will come to you. On campus interviews make receiving an internship drastically easier than it otherwise would be. In fact much of this article will likely be of little help to those who can simply apply through their career center for internships. You simply need to put in your resume, hope to get an interview, and do your thing. The best advice I can give is prepare and practice as much as possible for the intervew. Interview tips will be in a future post. We will address what to know for an interview at a later time.

For those of you who do not have many of the top companies coming to your school, let’s look at your options. Apply online or get a referral (foot in the door).

Let me tell you that you want the referral. A recommendation by a current employee is almost a guarantee of a first round interview. Leverage every contact you have. Talk to your parents, friends, family, and anyone else you might know who can help you out. Call your career center and alumni association. These two places often have substantial lists of alumni, where they work, what they do, and what their contact info is. Alumni always want to see people from their alma mater do well, particularly if you are not considered a target school for the industry you are attempting to break into.

Another valuable resource that is often underutilized is professors. A popular professor who has been around a while will know students who have gone on to dozens of positions around the country. While many students will not keep in touch, a few likely will. If you utilize a number of teachers you may find several with previous students in positions of power who still greatly respect this professors opinion. This can be a great resource to get your resume in the right hands.

Now let’s say you found a friend of a friend, or an alumni. They are a VP of investment banking in NYC at Goldman Sachs, your dream company! This is just an example. This could be any industry, any city. So how do you approach them? You cannot just send them your resume and ask them to give you an interview. You don’t know them and they don’t know you, so why should they automatically try to help?

Your goal is to establish some type of relationship with this person. Tell them you are very interested in banking (or whatever industry) and that you would love to hear more from them. You want to flatter this person. Ask them if they would speak to you about what they do, what they enjoy and dislike and that you would like to hear about how that person came to be where they are. Also ask if they would look at your resume and offer any pointers.

Hopefully the first line of questions will lead to a conversation on the phone. Now you can hear more about all these things you are interested in as well as establish some type of rapport with this person. Find things in common. Talk about what is new at your school. You NEED this person to LIKE YOU.

After building rapport ask them to review your resume. Asking them to look at your resume is useful for 3 reasons.

1. You genuinely want your resume reviewed by as many people in the industry as possible. Every industry, company, and person will have a slightly different opinion about your resume. But after having it reviewed by a number of people will be useful in determining what specific things each industry and company will look for. Your resume may be perfect in the grammatical sense, but it needs to be catered to each industry you are applying to.
2. This a round-about way to get this person to look at your resume, decide if they think it is good enough and if they want to forward it on. They may only be reviewing it, but they will be considering all these things as they look at it.
3. The more people invest in you, the more they want to see you succeed. If he spends 10 minutes or an hour helping you improve your resume, then he is more likely to want to see you get that internship or job. He is more likely to send your resume to HR now that he has put it up to his company’s standard and INVESTED HIMSELF in YOU. Now if you’re lucky in a few weeks you will get a call from HR and be on your way to your dream job!

Let’s look at the other aspect of applying for an internship: online. This is the most dreaded way of attempting to get any type of positive response from a company. Rather than your resume going into the hands of a discriminate person doing the job you want, and actually really giving it a hard look, it goes into a digital stack with thousands of others. Human Resources (many of which weren’t able to get your job) will now have to glance at your resume and several thousand others to determine the lucky one or two online applicants who get an interview.

There is no strategy one can follow for this process except to apply to everyone. I mean EVERYONE. Scour the internet and put out as many app’s as possible. This is a game of numbers. The more applications you send the better your odds of that one rare call back. I was one of those lucky online applicants. So I can tell you from experience it does happen.

Hopefully this article has given you some ideas about the application process for internships. I want you to know how to apply, where to apply, and what to expect. I also hope I’ve identified some of the hurdles you face and the ways to approach. Getting a great internship or a job is a difficult and stressful process. I hope that I can provide a little bit of guidance from the experiences I have gained this year. I hope my own mistakes and successes can prepare some others for this process. In the next few posts I plan to talk about the interview and offer process and some of the things you should know.