Isabelle Steiger is a guest blogger very close to our collective TILE heart, because she was one of our very first TILE interns! She’s just finishing up her junior year at Columbia, where she studies English. This year, Isabelle swung an awesome internship at HBO, so we figure she’s pretty much a pro. Here are a few of her thoughts on the internship-swinging process…
No matter what job you ultimately want, a summer internship is a great way to help you land one. An easy first step is to start thinking about the kinds of jobs you’re interested in, and then try to find companies that employ those people, come into regular contact with them, or provide related services. For example, if you want to be a novelist, you can’t intern at a novel factory. But you could intern at a publishing company, which, while not a novel factory, is about as close to one as you can get. Or you can get an internship at, say, a magazine. You won’t be able to practice writing fiction, but you will be able to practice writing for money.
If you know what kind of internship you’d like but don’t yet have a list of specific opportunities (or even if you have a few possibilities but would like some more), networking is your friend. Do you know anyone – a family friend, a teacher, etc. – who is somehow associated with a company you’d like to work for, or who has experience in your chosen field? The goal here isn’t necessarily to find someone who does exactly what you want to be doing. Even if the person you know can’t help you directly, he or she will probably be able to refer you to people who are closer to where you want to be. And maybe those people won’t be able to help you directly, either, but they’ll be able to give you a few more names. Whenever you find someone who’s receptive but unable to actually give you the internship you want, it’s always worth it to ask, “Do you know of anyone else I should contact?” Probability is on your side here: the more names you can rack up, the greater the chance that one of them will be a hit.
When you deal with potential employers directly, remember that you don’t just want to seem accomplished, you want to seem interested. If there’s a specific reason you want to work there, mention it in your emails or interviews. If you learn something new about the company that genuinely excites you, show it (while maintaining your professional decorum, of course). If you can manage to get across to the interviewer that you are genuinely enthusiastic about this internship, then it’s a point in your favor, because people are (obviously) more likely to excel and provide valuable insights when they’re engaged in what they’re doing. Conversely, if you couldn’t care less about the position you’re applying for, that’s probably what’s going to shine through in your interview.
On the subject of enthusiasm, it’s probably worth mentioning that interns are, by definition, the lowest rung of the ladder. So there is a very real chance that instead of doing what you want to do, you’ll end up running for coffee and picking up dry cleaning for the person who does what you want to do. There are very few ways around this essential truth – everyone has to start somewhere. But there’s still a silver lining in this arrangement: you get to come in to work every day and watch people doing the thing you want to do. You get to observe and learn the tactics those people use to excel in that position, and you get to witness mistakes you’ll know to avoid. Ideally, you’ll also get a chance to get to know at least some of those people, and to give them a chance to watch how capably you handle every task assigned to you.
And remember, even if you don’t land the perfect internship this year, every job is a learning experience. You may learn that you hate what you’re doing, but that’s part of the process!
- Isabelle