<p>I'm not having any luck with internships. Tips would be appreciated.</p>
<p>DS didn’t have any internships, though did work research for a prof for two years. He just got hired by an engineering company, parttime now, fulltime after he graduates in May. Maybe you won’t have to move home after school either!</p>
<p>Why does everyone say DS all the time? It drives me nuts!</p>
<p>“My dear son didn’t have any internships” sounds so awkward.
Is it really necessary to disambiguate dear children from not-dear ones?</p>
<p>What is the major of this engineer?</p>
<p>Can they do similar work on campus?</p>
<p>I did not have one internship…snagged a part-time gig at my school’s College of Medicine for some small department’s database. Worked 10 hours a week and did it for a year. Westinghouse Energy Systems in Pittsburgh (now defunct) hired me right out of school.</p>
<p>…and the rest is history.</p>
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So if I hire you, I’ll go out of business? jk</p>
<p>@OP: you really just need to find some way to set yourself apart from the crowd. It seems to me that most engr curriculum are similar, so you can’t use coursework as a tool to get you somewhere. Look for research or something else. If you’re willing to stay around awhile (not sure how long a while is…), a professor will almost always be willing to take you on.</p>
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<p>The biggest disadvantage you’ll have with no internship is when you’re sitting in a full-time interview and the interviewer says “Tell me about a time you had to influence a team to come to a solution.” or “Tell me about a time that you had to work in a difficult team and overcame that obstacle.” With no internship your potential “stories” to pull from are small and similar and do not convey as rich of an experience, learning, or ability as other students.</p>
<p>Nothing will prepare you for those interview questions like an internship, but you can be proactive and try to help yourself. For example, you can look for a summer position that’s not related to engineering. You could take a leadership position in a campus organization. You could try to start a campus organization or a community service event. Those sorts of things give you the stories you need to be able to show your interpersonal skills. If you have a number of those sorts of activities, it’s almost as good as having an internship and certainly much, much better than just telling stories about your senior design project.</p>
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<p>LOL…well actually, W.E.S. was bought out my some european firm but by then, I had moved to the MD/DC area.</p>
<p>They DID call my part-time gig to verify that I worked on databases. I still remember my then boss telling me when I came in for work.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to “semi-hijack” this thread, but I have a question relating to internships.</p>
<p>Should I list my GPA on my resume for internships?</p>
<p>If it’s above 3.0, yes. If it’s below 2.6, no. If it’s in the middle, that’s a judgement call.</p>