How to get a competitive internship as a 1st year By: Jun Loayza
Under: Interview, Uncategorized tagged with: 1st and 2nd year, internships, interviewsThe most common path taken by students is an internship their 3rd year and then recruit for a full-time offer their 4th year. An internship your 3rd year DOES NOT put you ahead of the game; you are merely ON PAR with all of your peers. In order to get ahead of the game, you need to take internships your 1st and 2nd year as an undergraduate. This is the perfect opportunity to gain experience, learn what you like and don’t like, and find a career that you are passionate about.
Which bring us to the questions: “How do I get a competitive internship as a 1st or 2nd year?”
The obvious disadvantage to being a 1st or 2nd year is inexperience. You are competing against 3rd and 4th years (even MBA students at times) for a competitive internship and it is extremely hard to stand out. Well actually, being the young kid actually makes you stand out that much more. You will definitely get noticed for getting an interview and being so young. The hard thing to do is showing that you deserve the internship much more than your more experienced counterparts and that you WILL create much more value to the company than your competitors.
So the objectives inside the interview room are always the same:
- Show that you can create great and unique value for the company
- Show that you can fit in and contribute to the company culture
As an inexperienced 1st or 2nd year, your unfair advantages are your Energy/Enthusiasm and Confidence.
Energy/Enthusiam
Showing high energy in the interview room means that you are highly motivated and are very enthusiastic to work for the company. Say that you are ready to do what it takes to work for the company and bring value to the company. A lot of entry-level work is grunt work anyways, which means that you can do it just as well as any 4th year can. Tell the interviewer that you’re enthusiastic and ready to make copies, make binders, do data entry, but that you’re more than capable of doing high-level work. Relate to your previous experiences in organizations and how you were able start new initiative, create new programs, or establish more efficient processes for your organization. Another very important skill is adaptability and the ability to learn quickly. Describe experiences with organizations where you had to quickly adapt to new environments and learn how to do things very quickly.
Do your company research! Know everything that is going on in the company and any big events that have happened. Showing that you have done your in-depth research on the company (and even on the interviewer if you know his or her name beforehand) shows that you are passionate to work for the company.
Confidence
This is the X-factor. Some people sound and feel impressive with their first impression. As a first year, you will have to feel impressive from the moment you shake the interviewers hand. There are many intangibles and subtle body movements that demonstrate high confidence:
- Talk through the person: Most people talk to the person. This means that your voice reaches the person and stops. Speaking with confidence means that you are speaking with power. To speak with power, you need to speak through the person instead of just at the person. When you’re talking to your interviewer, imagine that he or she is sitting 2 feet further back. Don’t yell at the interviewer, just project your voice through them. Doing this means you will talk with power and feel more confident.
- Talk smoothly. Get rid of all your “ummms” and “likes”. Get rid of pauses in your speech. A confident person not only has high quality things to say, but is able to choose his or her words carefully and relate them perfectly to you. This of course takes practice. Ask a friend to stop you every time you say an “um”, a “like”, or if you pause for too long in your speech.
- Lower your tone of voice. Speaking with a lower tone of voice gives you more power and more authority when you speak.
As a 1st or 2nd year, you need to join as many groups and organizations as possible and take leadership positions. Now go out there and start leading teams!
Popularity: 37% [?]
