Needs an experience to get an internship?-quite desperate mood

Career Opportunities & Internships
1

<p>Hi. </p>

<p>I am a junior student at University of Southern California studying mechanical engineering.
Briefly, going over myself, I have 3.77 Cumulative GPA, 3.89 major GPA, working in a mechanical engineering research lab on campus, working as a lab assistant in electrical engineering department and running as a president of a student organization. </p>

<p>Stating my point straight forward, I am having trouble getting an internship.</p>

<p>In my sophomore second semester, I looked for internships and it was not successful. Actually, I had like 3 interviews with companies, two with Lockheed Martin and one with NASA JPL. All did not offer any internships to me. After Lockheed Martin interview, I asked what I was missing and the interview nicely answered that I was in experienced in engineering field. </p>

<p>So, over the summer break, I looked for ways I could build some experience and luckily joined a research lab on campus. Also, I joined a project team that will build a power plant in Costa Rica over the winter break. </p>

<p>After the fall of junior year started, I tried really hard to look for internships. I literally did what the online career advising suggested. Visit career center, get resume critique and go to every career event including info sessions. Also, I applied to many places that doesn't filter out locations or the size of companies. </p>

<p>Luckily yet, I got a chance to have an interview with Exxon Mobil which was one of my dream places I wanted to work. And as I have been doing, I prepared everything, I could do. Prepare all the answers for the questions, keep all the etiquette during interview get counseling with the career service on campus. Then, the interview, I felt I did pretty good. I gave solid examples showing my technical and leadership experiences. </p>

<p>But, not long after the interview, I received the rejection letter from Exxon Mobil. Well, as a person who received so many rejection letters, I did not feel too bad. But I asked the interviewer at which point I was missing. The interviewer said I had no relative industry internship experience.</p>

<p>Sorry, it was quite long story to lead up to my main point. I just wanted to ask. Isn't the internship the place where you start to build the experience? Like, I do not understand how they can ask to a candidate to have experience before the first internship. I do not have any family or friend connection to engineering field where they can just put me in the first place. </p>

<p>Well, I feel quite desperate. I have been suffering quite severe depression after the constant failure over the summer about not getting any internship and even thought about bad things like suicide. But I obtained courage and did my best to get internships for next chance. But now, I am not getting any internships again. I do not know what I can do further at this point I tried everything I could do. </p>

<p>Please, help me.</p>

2

<p>Sorry to hear. Have you tried looking at other relate able non-engineering internships? Some of those might be easier to get. If you’re not doing an internships, I would assume that Costa Rica project might help you get some much needed experience. I notice at the end of your post the grammer went off a bit. Do you get nervous easily? I know during interviews confidence helps a lot, and people can tell when you are speaking when you are nervous.</p>

<p>I’ll pray that you get something and get out of depression!</p>

3

<p>You seem to have a lot of engineering experience that seems to qualify you for these internships. Perhaps its the way you project your experiences that makes these companies feel like you aren’t qualified? For instance, your experience with power plant design in Costa Rico can be described as engineering experience on many fronts but if you don’t mention it, people won’t know.</p>

<p>Also, send out as many resumes as possible, even online. My junior year summer, I sent out 35 resumes, half of which I didn’t hear back from.</p>

4

<p>Thank you to both of you for reading and paying careful attention to my post. When I was writing it, I was just in bad mood and quite upset as well. I think I just needed some words that comfort me. I already bothered my family once with these kind of matter, so I did not want to make them feel bad for the same thing. </p>

<p>I guess the Costa Rica project will definitely add some real type of engineering, but my concern is that this project will be during the winter break and I know the openings for internships decreases by big amount during the spring semester. This was one of the reason why I felt so urgent and desperate as well. I did not want to carry this anxiety of not getting any internship to the next semester. I wanted something confirmed that I can just concentrate on academics at school. </p>

<p>After quite long time I wrote this post, I thought to myself. What can I do? Because Exxon Mobil rejected me for their internship because of lack of internship experience, I would not just put down everything and cry for my bad situation. Well, I will keep searching for more opportunities and find a way that I can sell myself even without past internship experience. </p>

<p>Thank you.</p>