Many second and third-year students constantly seek summer internships in different companies. You can try finding an internship in the companies that visit your college, but not everybody has that privilege.
In this brief article, I will explain how you can find an internship on LinkedIn and other online websites if you are a college student.
1. Chose a field in which you are interested in
Many students are looking for internships and don’t know their specific field. Having a grasp on DSA and programming skills is a must, but knowing your field of interest will be very helpful in forwarding your resume to employers. You can explore the following fields and select a few of them to focus on:
— Machine Learning and AI
— Frontend Development
— Backend Development
— Fullstack Development
— Cybersecurity
— Networking
— Databases
— DevOps
…and there are a few more.
After exploring these fields, you will surely like a few of them. Even if you don’t like any of them, pick a few you could find yourself working on.
2. Get yourself involved in some projects and hackathons
One of the problems with a lot of aspiring developers is a lack of experience. So, you need some time to gain some project experience. Following are the places where you can get more experience:
— College projects
— Hackathons
— Personal projects(from youtube, udemy, etc.)
3. Make yourself a clean portfolio
Apart from your resume, a web portfolio will help you a lot for managers to look into you as an applicant. You can check out portfolios of other developers online. First, you can aim for a simple portfolio, but if you have the proper skills and time, feel free to make something more creative.
You need to make sure you have the following sections in your web portfolio:
— About me
— Skills
— Education
— Experience
— Contact
— Social
4. Be proactive on Twitter and LinkedIn
After doing the above steps, you can start looking for internships on different websites. Your focus can be on talking to people on LinkedIn and asking if they know about an open position or not. You would find several job channels, job posts, and openings. If you can’t find enough opportunities on LinkedIn, feel free to explore other job sites as well. Last but not least, there are field-specific websites where job listings are constantly being updated. Look for all the opportunities where you can apply.
You can start applying them one by one. One good suggestion is to organize your attempts in a Google sheet where you can track where have you applied and what is the status of any particular application. Since this is the last nail in the coffin, you need to maintain your discipline and not lose motivation due to rejection.
With all of that, you will reach where you want to go.
Best of Luck!
