How To Prepare Yourself For An Internship For 2022: Resume Tips, Experience & More

As 2022 comes closer by the day, for all the fellow college students or high school students out there still looking for an internship or trying to prepare themselves for one, you will find everything you need within this blog post to get you ready from day 1 all the way to the interview! It seems a lot harder in our heads when it comes to finding an internship that is the best for us, gives us experience, and will be fun but in reality, you can knock off everything in your internship wishlist with the right research done and making sure you are reaching out to the right people.

Besides dressing the part (which I’m assuming anyone reading this already is envisioning the outfits they are going to be wearing and purchasing), you also need to know the part and by that, you have to do background research on the company, make sure they align with your goals for where you want to be and what you want to do, and if this is feasible for your lifestyle such as, are you going to be committing or driving? Everything comes into play with internships therefore, keep reading to get started on how you are going to ace your next internship and land it without even thinking twice!

If you love any of these tips and have gotten inspiration, leave a comment and let us know on our Instagram @glamourandguide!

Do The Research

Before sitting down and going through dozens of internship listings online, grab a notebook, a piece of paper, or open up a note on your computer where you can breakdown everything you want within an internship. There’s a lot that goes into this because you don’t want to jump into applying to anything you see online without knowing exactly what you want. This is how you should divide up the paper you are going to be writing on:

Goals:
- Having specific goals for yourself such as where you want to be 3-5 years from now, even 1 year is essential to know what you have to accomplish in the time leading up to that. For example, if in a year you want to add a certain amount of money to your retirement fund, every time you get paid from work, make sure you are adding a certain amount into the fund to help you reach your goal instead of just all at once. Adding overtime is easier and better. This is an achievable goal because now all you have to do is give yourself an amount you have to deduct each time from your paycheck.
- Some examples of goals you can write for yourself include: being able to get your own apartment, saving a certain amount of money into your savings account, having a certain day of the week strictly for self care and much more. It is all supposed to be catered to your life so add any goals you want to hit.
- For the internship, make another section as well for what industry you want to specifically get an internship within. This minimizes the amount of work you will be doing because now you can search for specific internship roles and narrow it down.
Finances:
- Everyone wants to have a financially stable life, be able to provide for their family, and more! These are things that everyone can accomplish and when you write down financial goals, you have something to work towards and know how much work you should be picking up.
- For example, if you are a business owner and you want to hit a 5 figure month, you could consider raising prices for your items, adding more to your store, or giving something to customers that will make them want to come back and purchase more. Maybe you have a corporate job and want to possibly get a raise, do everything you can do achieve that even if you have to go to co-workers and speak to them or ask your manager yourself. It all requires stepping out of your comfort zone, working hard, and staying positive to know you got anything you set your mind to.
- For the internship, do you want to do something unpaid or do you want the internship to be paid? This is all criteria you have to consider because some companies don’t pay interns, some do, and some will do a trial period with you for a few months before deciding to pay. Every company is different so establish to yourself from the beginning what you’re looking for. You don’t have to have your mind set on a definite answer, but at least getting some of the basics down is great to know.
Career:
- Once graduating college, it can be a scary or anxiety driven road of trying to figure out what you’re going to do, who you’re going to work for, if you want to start your own business and more! We all have our own career choices or goals we want to strive towards to write down and do the research on the kind of industries you see yourself working in. Go on YouTube or TikTok and watch daily vlogs or a day in the life of what someone in the role you want is doing and if this is something you can see yourself doing. These more personal points of view allow you to see if this is the career you have in mind is a good fit for you.
- For the internship, search either on LinkedIn or on social media platforms what kind of internships people did to get to the job role they currently have and the skills they gained from that to get to where they are now. A lot of companies who hire interns too usually end up bringing them on full time for a position, so find companies online too who have a high rate of doing this because then you can easily be brought onto the team after graduation. It’s all about research and seeing what other people have done.

Making a Resume

Without a resume, you won’t be able to sign up for any internships let alone a job. This is a 1 page PDF all about you, your previous job or intern experience, accomplishments and awards, skills and more! Essentially like a brag sheet of a lot of things you have previously done all in one spot. Making a resume is easy and you can find a lot of online applications such as Canva or the Pages app on your Macbook to create one! It is fairly easy and just requires you to input all your information. Once downloaded and made, you can upload this resume to job listing sites such as Indeed, LinkedIn and more.

When searching for internships, your resume will help you stand out among others because this is where you get the chance to put anything about you to give the person hiring a first impression on you and who you are. There are tons of videos and articles out there to help you figure out what exactly you need on a resume so you don’t put too much unnecessary info. Once it’s been perfected and you start applying to places, make sure your resume is catered to what the job is asking for.

If you have to edit your resume and add new information or older ones to fit the job description or title that the job is asking for, then you can totally do that as well. If you have done a lot of previous internships within journalism but the one you’re applying for is within social media, you’re most likely going to add in information about social media, your experience working online, managing accounts and more based on what the social media internship is asking for. You’re not going to put down every single journalism internship down because then the person hiring for the position is going to see that you’re more qualified for something within writing, not social media. So make your edits or adjustments to your resume and small tweaks depending on what the listing is asking for.

A tip that has changed that game for me when it comes to finding internships and roles is signing up for job alerts and emails. Receiving emails from brands that pack up your inbox with useless info and promos or getting your spam full is completely different from this. When you go to certain job listing websites such as Indeed and LinkedIn, you can turn on job alerts for specific positions and get emails every week with positions either relating to that exact role or similar ones for you to check out.

When you go on LinkedIn, go to the search bar and type a specific role for example, public relations intern, a blue bar will come up at the bottom of the screen saying “get job alerts for this search” and all you would have to do is click to turn that on. As soon as it’s on, you will be notified to receive job alerts within your email every week tailored to that specific role and then as mentioned before, if it’s not that exact role, you will get similar ones related to that. This is extremely useful because now you don’t need to look up the exact position on your own and can get helpful emails instead right at your inbox.

It is recommend that you do this too because some job listings can’t be found as easily and I’ve been able to find great ones simply through emails, not just through the search bar! It’s a great tip that all should do and can totally help out within the intern and job searching time period for you.

Prepare Yourself for Mock Interviews

With all the tools available online and resources we have, you can easily search up job interview questions that people typically ask, or you can do deeper research and see if there’s people who have actually worked the role and know the specific questions they ask so you can be prepared. No matter what, you will be able to find at least some sort of source related to questions they ask you in an interview so practice for questions beyond the basics of telling about yourself, who you are and why you want the role.

Besides preparing for questions about yourself, you also need to know the history of the company and at least some background information on them. The hiring manager usually gives you background information themselves, but when you have done your own research and use this to help you with questions they’re going to ask you, you’re going to be better prepared because you know what the company stands for, their goals, and more.

Every job listing is different and internships as well, so you want to be as prepared as possible for anything that comes at you. You can put together a series of questions that the person hiring may ask and have a friend or family member do mock interviews with you. They will sit down with you in a setting similar to the one you will be doing when it’s time for the real interview. Now you can be asked questions and answer them the exact way you would be asked as if this is the hiring manager!

Doing mock interviews like this also lets you release some of the nerves you might get as if you’re in the real interview! You are going to kick down that wall and do it with confidence when it’s time for the real deal and show the hiring manager that you got this.

Reach Out To Others

Many don’t talk about this important tip when it comes to finding internships or landing a job, and that’s making connections with people within the industry you want to be in. This doesn’t mean just sending connections to people on LinkedIn and after they accept it you let it be. Your job is not over yet. If you don’t know how LinkedIn connections work, they’re basically like friend requests but they’re called “connections” so when someone sends you a connection request, you can accept it or decline it. When you accept it, the person and you are automatically given access to message each other. If they decline it, you can’t message them and can only view their profile.

Do research on people within the industry you want to be, type in the company you want to work for and see who is on LinkedIn that works for the company. After you find these people, reach out to them either on their social media channels or send a connection request on LinkedIn to see if they will accept it. When they accept it, send them a message giving a little information about yourself, who you are, why you’re reaching out and that you would like to chat and ask them a few questions if possible about their current role and how they got it. This gives you more personal insight from someone who is already in the position you want to be in and you can easily ask them anything whether it’s about the interview process, work environment, and more!

Making connections doesn’t just have to be on LinkedIn either! You can find a lot of people who work for certain companies online especially TikTok. For example, Katie Welch who is the Chieg Marketing Officer of Rare Beauty is on TikTok and gives career tips plus mentor advice on how anyone can snag a role within the beauty industry. We’ve linked her profile here and her content goes to show that a lot of these people who have high roles within companies are on social media and can be easily contacted through there too!