<p>I am wondering how some people went about landing their first internships, be it major job fair, small info sessions, online applications, or anything I haven't thought of...</p>
<p>anyone?</p>
<p>school’s engineering career services job board and career fair</p>
<p>for the career fair, companies obviously come with an interview sign up sheet, get there early and show interest and enthusiasm about the company and get your name on that list, once you get the interview you have a real shot of showing them your value</p>
<p>Apply everywhere and through every venue.</p>
<p>I found the easiest and best way was going to engineering society conventions. They usually have hoards of job recruiters there (the few I’ve attended had upwards of 70-ish employers) who will give mini-interviews and accept resumes, and call you in for another interview if they’re interested.</p>
<p>Some companies are doing everything on line these days. My D’s school has a web page where they post the students’ resumes, and local companies have access to browse them. A company she had never heard of asked her to come interview based on that (and she ended up having a great intership there). Her other internship was with another local company that allows you to register to define specific keywords, and when a posting containing your keywords is posted, you are sent an automatic email. She did that, and was able to respond immediately to appropriate postings. As for career fairs, at least in her experience, they weren’t helpful. A crowd gathers at the popular employers booths’, and the first few in line take up all their time.</p>
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<p>I used to track which students spoke to us at career fairs, and that played a role in who got interviews when we came back to campus. Students that showed more interest (came to the career fair, came to info sessions, etc) were given higher priority.</p>
<p>Another info sessions are important: I always kept 2 interview slots open for students that talked to me during info sessions. I once got the craziest interview that way.</p>
<p>I got my first internship, after freshman year, by cold calling via email (cold-mailing?) my state DOT and asking if they had anything available. I sent them my resume in the email (never had anything resembling an interview) about three months before classes ended and didn’t hear back from them until the week of finals. They offered me the job and I accepted since, well, I had no other options. Then again since they hadn’t advertised that they were hiring an intern in any way neither did they.</p>
<p>In September of sophomore year I responded to one of the adviser emails and got an interview set up for October. They offered me the internship right after the interview and I accepted a few days later since it was roughly double my pay from the last year and I had somewhere I could live for free over the summer.</p>
<p>Junior year I ended up with 4 offers. One in Alabama I got through an on campus job fair. I talked with them, they flew me out for an interview, and offered me an internship a few weeks after the interview. The second I got through a contact I made at a Materials Science conference, and the internship was in Ohio. The third I got from putting my resume on a government website. They called me and did a phone interview, and I got an offer to work in DC. The last one, which I ended up accepting, was in Roanoke, VA. One of my professors knew a guy that worked at the company (he’d graduated a few years ago) and he’d asked her if there was anyone she recommended. The VA and Alabama jobs had the same pay and I wouldn’t have to pay extra for housing in VA, and since the other two were for substantially less money, not to mention in industries I wasn’t particularly interested in, I took the VA gig.</p>
<p>I’ve already got my job lined up for graduation. I decided to go in a completely different direction than any of my internships for a lot of reasons (it was a bad environment and an extremely unstable industry) so all my contacts were about useless. I talked with a company at our engineering career fair because I was curious as to why they had come since they weren’t an engineering company at all, but I liked the program they were hiring for so I went to their info session. Three interview dates and something on the order of 15 interviews with them later I got an offer, which I’ve already accepted.</p>
<p>For the 7 offers I’ve gotten I’ve probably sent out around 75 emails and if you count me passing my resume out at career fairs over 100. I usually got the jobs I interviewed for (there was one permanent job and one internship that I interviewed for and didn’t get) but getting from initial contact to the interview was the hard part. I sent out a TON of cold calls and talked to a TON of people at conferences and job fairs. You’ve got to put yourself out there, a lot, especially if you don’t have many contacts or much relevant experience.</p>