Son is a senior ME major who wants to do an internship this summer before graduating in the fall. He has been to the itern fair and submitted numerous resumes, with no responses. He is above a 3.0. Any insight on breaking into one of these internships? Tips?
Friends, family, and alumni. By far the best sources of internships. Career fairs aren’t bad but never rely on just submitting resumes to job postings.
He said that the engineering fair just results in a lot of “apply on our website.” Continuing to reach out to acquaintances with fingers crossed.
Tell him to apply to literally EVERYTHING he sees online related to ME (his school’s job site, indeed, linked, etc). I kept a spreadsheet with every company I applied to, the dates I applied, interview status, and rejections. I ended up applying for ~50 positions and had interviews for 6 of them, and had several offers. Had I not applied to those particular companies, I would have applied to ~44 and ended up with nothing, which is why I tell people to apply to everything they see since you just never know.
Also, have career services look at his resume. It might help to see if he can contact his school’s alumni association and find contacts there.
Competition for internships is fierce. He has to do more than just wait for a response. Call. Talk to professors. See if there’s an alumni network, etc.
The applications online are “buzz-term” related.
HR departments put out the ads given to them by the managers, but they (HR’s) have no idea what the qualifications mean.
Your son has to input “ME” terms into corporate websites so that they can be retrieved and filtered by the software programs designed for the online applications. Look at the requirements in the “intern description” and use their sentences in cover letters and online applications.
My son is also an ME major (currently a sophomore). He is also trying to find an internship for the summer. Luckily he had one last summer that he got through his old Boy Scoutmaster (he is an Eagle Scout). He was hoping to intern there again this summer. However the company is a small startup and they told him they had no funding for interns this summer.
He has literally applied to probably 75 positions since January. He has finally started getting some requests for phone interviews. Had a couple last week and is scheduled for a couple this week. Hoping some will lead to in-person interviews and then offers!!
Tell him to keep plugging away!!
Mine applied a lot online but got nothing until a recruiter came to her group and collect resume. This company is hiring a lot of people for summer job, almost 50. So school resources are probably best.
Finally caught a semi - break. Found a company where he currently lives that is hiring basically an assistant in an engineering office. They said it isn’t really engineering related work, but he will be in the office and who knows what it could expose him to. At least it’s something!
I have suggested to others. Depends on your city/state but the craigslist may have jobs that are engineering related. They may be engineering tech type jobs or even office ones in an engineering construction firm but who cares. All job experiences offer valuable skills.