⚠️ Here’s my internship search mistakes to avoid ⚠️

hellos! sorry for the lack of updates, i’ve been busy at intern, yay! I wanna start of my new series of #internshipnoob by sharing the mistakes i made to help you avoid doing them during your first/ next internship cycle !

1️⃣ Do not pile all your interviews on the same day

- double check your interview format, timing and venue as well

I kid you not, once I stacked interviews on 3 days because i thought that I wouldnt be free the entire week and i thought doing everything on the same day would help “maintain the job search mindset” ( I dont know why i thought that 🤨) It was super bad because I immediately thought all interviews were online when one was actually offline. Lucky for me, the one offline was not something I was particularly interested in and hence, I was willing to let it go. But still, it was a major L and I can’t imagine what if the interview was for an opportunity i really wanted. Either way, I was left super exhausted after all the interviews due to me having to familiarise myself with company research i did prior and prepare to present myself well for each interview. Very exhausting, I would not recommend at all. You are better off breaking up your interviews on the seperate days.

2️⃣ Apply for internships with clear intentions and not just for the sake of fulfilling numbers

- Shortlist your top 2 roles to apply for that align with your career aspirations/ curiosity

- Apply for roles that you are willing to accept and do an internship (70-80% interest minimally)

Due to my insecurity over securing a internship position. I basically mass visited all the internships sites to apply for any jobs that I could have a chance in getting without a clear direction of what type and what kind of internships I wanted. To be fair, at this point, I didnt know what I liked or wanted which hence resulted me trying for all types of internship I felt my portfolio could get ( Marketing, HR, research etc). This caused me to attend a lot of interviews earlier on in my internship search that I did not have want because of the pay and the misaligned job scope. While this was good practice on my interviews earlier on, it definitely burnt me out early because i was swamped with interviews for places I didnt 100% want and that showed clearly in my interviews and caused me to not receive an end offer for those as well.

However, after I started to plan my career progression and applied for research and hr roles (aka office roles to see if i kind of liked corporate environment). Interviews started to become less dreary and less frequent, which helped to revitalise me from my internship search burnout.

3️⃣ Never assume you got the internship offer until you receive a internship agreement letter to sign.

Very early on into my internship search, I managed to secure a verbal offer for a marketing intern for a gov agency. However, because they lacked the funds and would require to seek approval to get me on board they were asking me if I was still willing, which i said I was, thinking that it amounted to an offer already and did not want to reject in case I could not get internships later on. Not to anyone’s surprise, a few weeks later, I was told by HR that they would not proceed with me because internal hiring of interns had already proceeded long before the grant was approved to get me on board. During those weeks before the rejection, I had stopped applying for internships. Because of the sudden switch in rejection, I started to doubt my internship chances and anxiously applied to more internships that i could get based on chance. Either way, now I have learnt that internships offers are “rejectable” and “rescindable” until the organisation offers u a contract so dont make this mistake that i did!

Thats end of possibly part 1/? for my internship noob series! If you have any advice as well do share it in the comments below!

#shemuses #BeReal #internshipnoob

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