Internship and Job Search – Overview

The goal of this guide is to help you understand and plan for the process of a modern job search. This guide will not get deeply into specifics of the tools you will use—resumes, cover letters, elevator pitch, interview skills, LinkedIn—as we have other specific guides for each of those things for you to use as a reference. This guide is about strategy, goal setting and the techniques that will put you in a position to find and be considered for opportunities.

You may think that searching for a job is something you don’t have to think about until after graduation. There are two reasons why this is not the best way to approach the concept.

First, an internship search and a full‐time job search are very similar in terms of techniques, tools and process. You should be thinking about internships pretty early in your academic career, so learning about this early is important. Second, in order to be a competitive candidate in today’s job market, not only do you need the knowledge, skills and abilities to stand out, you also need the process by which you search to serve as a tool to help you stand out. Engaging in that process properly requires time to create the tools you need. It also requires that you, ideally, be engaged in the process at the same time that the recruiters and hiring managers seeking college grads are most actively searching.

If you are starting this process after graduation—or even just later in your academic career—don’t panic! The process outlined in this guide works no matter when you get started. In fact, the process and tools are really no different if you are a current student seeking an internship, recent graduate seeking your first full‐time job or an experienced candidate seeking a new position.