I’ve had my fair share of struggles trying to land an internship or getting my first full time job while in university. Here I underline my takeaways from the whole process. Surely, it has become a lot of work to find the simplest internship or real job experience out the door. If your vision for a work life is like me, you probably think that studying for a degree that is without relevant experience, makes the said degree worthless. You need experience on how your field works and what type of real work is being done. Eventually you’d find yourself searching for an internship. Some schools have it as a requirement. Whatever it may be here are some takeaways from my experience.
Follow-up to get feedback if you feel stuck
Unless you are working in retail, or your career resembles a retail item (fast consumption, much needed, high turnover, versatile, almost universal etc.) you, reaching out to a complete stranger - hiring manager- won’t initiate a conversation by itself. You are at face value just another task to be dealt with.
A plethora of reasons might have led to them not considering you; generally entry-low level applications are ghosted when there is no fit. This inevitably leads to you doubting your talent and fit factor in workplace. They obviously don’t have to time to tell anyone reasons. Some startup work on ‘vibe based’ admissions you have to ‘vibe’ or ‘fit’ with the rest of the team generally because it is a lot of responsibility on the founders to keep the teams happy and progressing and they would like to keep a stable balance.
Following-up helps in two ways. 1. You can get valuable feedback to improve your application, your presentation for the next time. 2. You will be sure of your talent and develop a more healthy way to approach the problem.
Automate
Companies do that all the time. They get CVs, feed them into ATS algorithms, review and send out results, conduct interviews. More or less all automated. So why don’t you? Grab a copy of airtables job hunting templates, sign up for startup.jobs’s email alerts etc. This will save you a lot of time and makes sure that you don’t allow opportunities to fall down in cracks.
Irrelevant = nonexistent
It pays to be specific in your interests and goals early on. As much as there are room for generalist careers, I can attest that as a generalist there is immense value in discovering what you want to progress on early on. This helps you get connected and to discover the right people to approach as potential mentors.
Corporate would like to play puzzle as well. They would like you to fit job descriptions a little easier than the competition. Look for opportunities that resemble towards a solid progression path as much as possible. Being relevant and planned early in your career pays.
