I’m a student at Burlington County College in NJ expected to transfer over the next year and I’m trying to find internships in the IT industry (with main focus on networking, security, and a few programming courses here and there), but a lot of them specifically require work experience. Problem is, HOW can you get work experience? Isn’t the purpose of internships? If I had the experience, I would be getting a job, not an internship. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a whole lot of experience outside of the courses I have learned because BCC keeps cutting back on their technology courses in favor of nursing and related fields, and I’m somewhat mentally slow so I’m not the best self-learner out there. How do I start? I’m really in a fog here.
Why not setup a freelance business? Web design is an easy one. Craigslist is an easy place to find people who are looking for programmers.
How about participating in an open source project? You won’t get paid but it probably counts as experience.
What you do in instances like this is to put your “work experience” (of any kind) down in the blank. Unless it very specifically states what kind of work experience. In most cases they want to know if you have the basics of arriving on time, etc.
It’s not likely that an undergraduate internship strictly “requires” work experience. They provide a place to put work experience, but they understand that not all applicants are going to have actual paid work experience in the field.