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Internship Searching the Wayne Gretzky Way

Posted by Willy Franzen on Monday, March 16, 2009

Wayne Gretzky, one of the greatest hockey players to ever live, once said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” That’s great advice for just about anything in life, but figuring out where that puck is going to be is a lot easier said than done.

What if you always had a way of knowing where the puck was going to be?

Well, you probably wouldn’t be looking for an internship. Instead you’d be playing postseason college hockey (Go Big Red!) and preparing yourself for a six-figure job/NHL contract when you graduate.

The game of hockey is extremely unpredictable when it comes to where the puck is going to be, that’s why Gretzky was such a great talent. He had an inherent ability to anticipate what would happen next. Luckily, you don’t need natural talent to be like Gretzky when it comes to your internship search.

Gretzky on Internships

The world of internships may be very different from the world of hockey (except of course when you’re looking at hockey internships), but Gretzky’s insight still applies. Being able to anticipate where the internships will be can give you a huge advantage over other internship seekers. While trying to figure out where a puck is going to be after it bounces off boards, sticks, and pads while sliding across a slick surface is tough, guessing where internships are going to posted is ridiculously easy.

It’s easy because internships, unlike hockey pucks, are usually going to be where they have already been. Companies that hire interns are creatures of habit – they tend to do the same thing year after year. Now, I haven’t done any empirical research on this, but I’d wager that there’s an extremely high correlation (in terms of who, what, when, and where) between last year’s internship offerings and this year’s internship offerings for a given company.

What does this mean?

Stop waiting for companies to post their internships!

Anticipating the Need

If you were an internship coordinator (or whoever is in charge of hiring interns), would you rather hire the kid who e-mailed you and said something like:

Hi Internship Recruiter,

My name is Joe Smith. I am a huge fan of your products; in fact, I have been using them since I was 12 when I did science projects with my Dad. I even tied your newly released widget into a research paper that I’m writing for one of my classes in Industrial Design. I saw that your company offered internships last year, but I haven’t seen them posted yet this year. I’m trying to make plans for the Summer, and I actually already have two internship offers, but an internship with XYZ Industries would be a dream come true for me. If you will be announcing internships in the coming weeks, please consider this my application if it is appropriate. (I have attached a cover letter and resume below). If you have more specific application needs, please let me know what they are and I will get an application to you as quickly possible. Finally, if you aren’t planning on hiring interns this year, I hope that you will reconsider. I am truly excited about the prospect of working at XYZ Industries, and I know that I can make a great Summer addition to your Industrial Design team.

Sincerely,

Joe Smith

Or would you take the kid who waited until the day of the application deadline?

It may not be a clear cut decision (or maybe it is?), but you have to think that Joe Smith has an edge over all of the other candidates.

That’s what it takes to land the internship of your dreams. An edge.

How To Anticipate

This approach not only works for internships that haven’t been posted yet, but it also works for internships that don’t exist. Anticipating a need is the best way to get a company to create an internship for you, but that’s a different article.

So, how do you figure out which companies are going to be posting internships in the future?

You look for old internship postings and references to internship programs that may not be accepting applications right now.

You can get extremely advanced with the tactics of anticipating internshps, but simply using some Google search tricks and plugging companies’ Internships pages into Archive.org is a great start. I wish that there was more to tell you, but it’s really that easy.

Here’s an example: Gossip blog Valleywag posted an internship in June last year. They may or may not be taking interns this year, but waiting until June to find out probably isn’t in your best interest. If you anticipate a need and act on it right now, there’s a decent chance that Valleywag won’t post internships this year because they already hired you.

Once you get a hang of the research techniques, anticipating where the internships are going to be is simple.

The most important part is crafting your pitch, and that takes a lot of work. It’s not something that I’m going to cover in this article, but I will advise you that instead of sending an e-mail asking whether a company is offering internships and making it easy for them to say no, you should just apply right off the bat like I demonstrated in the sample e-mail above. It shows a ton of initiative.

Now, if you’re looking for a place to get started, why don’t you check out our internship archives. There are nearly 400 companies and organizations who have hired interns in the past. You have to think that most of them will be hiring interns in the future too.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Seabamirum

Tags: advice, internship search

Groupereye

Posted by Willy Franzen on Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Groupereye is an advertiser on One Day, One Internship.

Since I’m a fisherman, I actually know what a grouper eye looks like. So, let me tell you that Groupereye’s logo is accurate, even if they have nothing to do with fishing. Groupereye is a new website that allows you to enter live case competitions with companies that are hungry for talented interns. If your case wins, you’ll get 100 bucks and consideration for an internship. It’s way better than sending out a boat load of resumes, and it can make you money… now. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with Groupereye’s founder Ted Williams (not the baseball player who is cryogenically frozen), and I’m really excited about where he’s taking this. I’m happy to have Groupereye as an advertiser here, and I hope that you’ll check out their current cases.

Tags: advertisement, announcement

Someone Won an iPod Touch!

Posted by Willy Franzen on Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Congratulations to Alex Payne, a recent graduate of Duke University. He won the iPod Touch in our Tell a Friend, Win an iPod Touch Contest. You may remember Alex from our article on Using Facebook Ads for Job Search, as he was one of the initial participants in the experiment. His number was picked randomly by Microsoft Excel’s Random Number Generator, but we have to say that we’re happy to see him win.

Overall, the number of entries in the contest was a bit disappointing. We had to disqualify a few people for trying to game the system, but most of the people who entered did a great job of telling their friends about us. We think that either the contest was too confusing or all of you already have iPods.

We still think that are contests are a great way to get you more involved, but we aren’t going to give away sweet prizes to get low turnout. So we want to hear from you. What should we do for our next contest? What types of prizes would you like to see (something related to your job search)? How can we take One Day, One Internship from a great resource to a thriving community for job seekers to share tips and ideas?

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Tags: announcement, contest