<p>I'm a junior at UC Berkeley. I just recently transferred in and I'm now looking into getting internships but I've been having a hard time with it. Essentially, I have very little/no relevant experience that one might need to acquire an internship. Throughout high school and my years at community college I was a full-time caretaker for my mom and generally had a lot of personal problems. It's not an excuse for not being more involved but just an explanation for why I wasn't - I don't know if I personally could have handled the additional stress. All I have in terms of experience is 3 volunteer positions I held (very minor ones, and one was in high school). </p>
<p>My question is, does anyone have any advice on how I could get my foot in the door professionally? I'm not talking about a paid internship - I just want to acquire some experience and pick up skills. I'm a dedicated student and I would be a dedicated worker, if I could get a chance! I'm really, really interested in getting involved, but every position I've applied for hasn't replied back because (I'm assuming) of my less-than-stellar resume. </p>
<p>I'd really appreciate any help - resources you used to get internships, general advice, etc. Thanks!</p>
<p>Connections. If you don’t have those, then go around to everyone and beg. Someone will eventually take pity on you. But you have to be aggressive to get your foot in the door.</p>
<p>Go to your school’s Career Center and ask for advice. Try to get help from them in writing a good resume. A lot of interns got hired without much experience. You also need to apply to as many internships as possible and cast your net wide regarding type of jobs and locations to increase your chances. Now is the time to start and best wishes to you.</p>
<p>Yeah I’ve been to the Career Center once regarding my resume but I’ll be sure to make another appointment just centered around resources that will help me get an internship. </p>
<p>I’m majoring in Political Science, so I’d ideally like any internships in the political/legal field.</p>
<p>When I couldn’t find summer internships, I did some temp work. I don’t know how realistic that would be for you during the school year (since my assignments were usually 40 hours a week), but at the least, it’s something to consider later if you find yourself without other summer work.</p>
<p>Ultimately, I got my first “real” internship in a while after finding it on Craigslist, but I got a couple interviews from ones I found from looking directly on corporate sites (and didn’t see listed anywhere else).</p>
<p>On a related note, some publicity coordinator-type work I did for a student government organization at UCSB proved to be a useful thing to have on my resume, and I was mainly just writing a newsletter. Perhaps you could look at doing something in one of Cal’s ASUC offices?</p>
<p>I recently heard about an “ambassador program” by a firm called iversity.org. It is offering an internship and it starts like a competition. In the end it is an internship where you do marketing at you own university and you can make quite a lot of money… (up to 800$/month…)</p>
<p>So as far as I understood it there is not a lot of expereince required in the first place but rather your good ideas and creativity count.</p>