How to Get a Great Internship with No Experience

Searching for that first internship can be overwhelming, especially for those with little or no experience in the field.

Why? We’ve all got to start somewhere! So we’ve got some tips to land you that first internship while spending the summer outside doing what you love.

Resume – The hardest part is getting started. While you want to fit as much of your experience onto your resume as possible, you also want to be deliberate about what you are putting down and how it relates to the job you are applying for. For example, if you babysat to earn money growing up it would be a fantastic addition to your resume for camp, but maybe not as essential to bring up for an internship in other fields. While you’re describing your experiences, be sure to focus on not only what you did but the outcomes of those decisions. Did you expand your babysitting empire over time? Or maybe grow too big and had to learn how to scale down respectfully?

Dig deep to find experience you have – So, you can’t think of work related experience for the job you are applying for? We promise you have it. While the typical “experience” section of a resume or a job interview is focused on work related experience that isn’t the only kind that exists. We learn lessons and gain experience from everything in life. If you worked at as a server for example, that job didn’t only teach you how to serve but also taught you valuable interpersonal skills that employers are looking for like teamwork, customer service, and communication. The skills camps are looking for can come from all different kinds of backgrounds, and all different levels of experience.

The Interview – While it’s not the most difficult part of the process it is definitely the most intimidating, especially without having a few under your belt. But here’s the best secret we can impart on you: If you’ve gotten an interview your potential employer already likes the idea of you working with them.

Once you get the interview, your job is simply to be prepared. Go into it with a copy of your resume in front of you (and one for the interviewer if it’s in person) to help if you get stuck, but in the same way you would prepare for a test try to be able to recount the broad strokes of the resume without referring to it.

While answering questions, try and give a specific example to the interviewer. This is where it may be beneficial to research some common interview questions and prepare some stories to tell in your answers.