Applying for Internships – Round Two

Last week, we started with a list of 2-3 internship sites, began researching each site, tailored application materials for each, then submitted applications. Our goal over the next few weeks will be to submit roughly 2-3 internship applications each week.

This week:
Follow up with each site that you applied for last week. Either call or email, preferably call, each of the 2-3 sites. Ensure that your application materials were received and that everything was intact (sometimes attachments can be forgotten or may not open correctly, or items can be lost in the mail). Next, ask what their hiring timeline looks like. You might ask something like, “Do you have a sense of when you will be calling applicants for interviews?” Follow-up is extremely important, but the majority of applicants won’t do it – the fact that you do follow up with the internship site will demonstrate a level of professionalism expected at this stage in your career and will also show your genuine interest in the opportunity.

Note down any important dates or information that you glean from your follow-up conversations and plan to do additional follow-up based on those dates.

Identify the next 2-3 internship sites to which you would like to apply. We’ll call these the Round Two internships. Repeat the steps you took last week to research each of these sites.

An important note about balance
Fitting your internship search into an already busy schedule can feel a bit like a circus act – like trying to keep a bunch of plates spinning at the same time. But, when you spread out the process over a few weeks, you get to say just how many plates you want to keep spinning. Some weeks, you may have little to no time to commit to your applications – that’s fine. Perhaps during midterms, you send out no tailored applications, but the following week you send out 5 instead of 3. It’s still a balancing act, but you’re in control, so if you’re feeling like you’ve got too many plates in motion, it’s O.K to put a few down for a week or so.

Succeeding in your courses is still the priority. This is one of the reasons I’m a big fan of applying in rounds – it ensures that you’re doing a little bit of career-related activity every week, and you get to set the pace based on what’s manageable given your course load.

If this is one of those busier weeks for you, we won’t worry about tailoring and sending out application materials. Having followed up with Round One internships and conducted research on your Round Two internships this week, you’ll be ready to tailor and submit applications next week.