Ryder McEntyre, Campus Carrier Grpahics Editor

 I’ve had four internships. A couple of them were at the same time. I’m kind of insane. Getting an internship can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be, so I’ve written an exhaustive guide to landing the internship of your dreams.

1. Align Your Priorities with Career Development

Your priorities should always be geared towards getting cutting-edge, career-related experience. Define your goals for an internship before you begin exploring. For example: Maybe you want to learn a new computer program while at an internship.

2. Create a LinkedIn & Résumé

This is extremely important! LinkedIn is the social network for the professional world. You’re not a serious candidate for an internship until you have a LinkedIn profile. It allows you to upload your résumé, add portfolio links and connect with previous colleagues, friends, supervisors, even your parents. You can list your skills, education, relevant coursework, past jobs, specialties and so on. LinkedIn becomes the face of your Internet presence, which I’m sure is preferable to your Facebook pictures with you playing beer pong or taking selfies on your Instagram and posting them on Twitter. However, a résumé will always be required. Keep it to one page, with only the experiences that are relevant to the job you’re applying for.

3. Identify and Research Possible Employers

Think back to any connections you, your professors, your previous supervisors, or even your parents might have. LinkedIn makes going back to connections very easy. You can message a group of people on LinkedIn that you know from school or your current job and ask around for help on finding an internship. This sort of networking is vital to getting a concrete internship. Ask your connections about any openings at a company or small business that has the types of jobs you would want when you graduate.

Once you have a list of at least five concrete internship possibilities, it’s time to research the company or small business that’s offering those internships. If the company is not well respected or is probably going to go bankrupt in the next couple years because of poor management, that’s the kind of failure you do not want on your résumé.

4. Contact & Establish Communication with your (hopefully) future employer(s)

This is a very important stage. It’s the first impression before your internship. Employers begin looking for applicants up to three months before summer starts. Get in the door just before they become flooded with applicants. Employers can tell a lot from someone based on how an email is formatted. Yes, email. That’s how you should contact almost every possible employer from here on out. It’s important at this stage to have a formal email address. Employers tend to look kindly upon Gmail as it has become an unofficial industry standard. Make a Gmail account with some variation of your first and last name. It puts your name straight into the employer’s head because they do not have to figure out some mysterious alias you’ve used since you were instant messaging your friends on your AOL account in the eighth grade.

Now, the email. It should have a simple greeting, an explanation of who you are, what you want, why you matter and how you heard about the position in the first paragraph. I usually use this email as an impromptu first edition of a cover letter. Outline your previous experience and why you are interested in this position in the following paragraphs.

Attach your résumé, add any hyperlinks to your portfolio and especially your LinkedIn. Create a professional-looking signature at the end of your email with your current position, your phone number, and any other links you might want to include.

If your chosen employers require an application, fill it out and attach it to the email as well.

If you do not hear back from them, wait one to two weeks, depending on how large the company is (the larger, the longer you should wait), and give them a call. Tell them you sent in an email with interest in applying for the internship advertised and that you are checking on your application. Do not complain that you have not heard from them. You are merely checking in because you are very interested and passionate about this line of work, especially at this company.

5. You’re in the Enemy’s Territory, Waiting for a Death Sentence

Just kidding, you’ve arrived a good 10 minutes early to the place you will hopefully find future employment. It’s exciting, but comes with a lot of nail biting. (I can rhyme!) Anyway, you should definitely arrive no more and no less than 10 minutes early. Allow for traffic. I say 10 minutes specifically because it shows that you care enough to show up early, but it also means you won’t be sitting there for 30 minutes because you showed up way too early thinking that was a good thing, and they are sitting in their office buried under a thousand years of paperwork where they probably feel bad about making you wait so long and it stresses them out. Don’t stress the person who is going to interview you.

On arrival, talk to the secretary or whoever is at the first desk you come to and introduce yourself, shake their hand firmly, maintain eye contact, tell them why you are in their office being so polite and who you are there to see.

Enter the interview, maintain eye contact, introduce yourself, say it’s great to meet them, keep maintaining eye contact the entire time and thank them for allowing you to interview with them. And answer their questions honestly. Turn a possibly negative question into a positive answer about yourself. Don’t sell yourself short. At the end, be clear about communication in the future. If their phone number was not in their signature of their email, ask for their card so you have their direct line. Stand up, shake their hand, smile, maintain eye contact and thank them “so much” for the opportunity.

6. The Hardest Part is the Wait

Waiting to hear from them is so nerve wracking, you can’t imagine doing anything else but checking your email and have your phone on loud at all times, even during class. Give them three days, or up to a week after the final date they said they would contact you, before you contact them. In my experience, an internship possibility stops being a possibility after three weeks of no communication and it’s safe to say you’ve lost that one.

If you hear from them and the answer is yes, take it with grace and elegance. Don’t scream in their ear. Be clear in your communication about when they want you to start and most of all, thank them for the opportunity and tell them they have made an excellent choice—but say that last bit in a way that doesn’t sound like you’re full of yourself, just confident in your abilities.

If you hear from them and the answer is no, don’t jump off of something very tall. There’s a better internship out there that understands you and wants you in their office. Take the rejection gracefully on the phone, and then cry it out, yell it out, or my favorite, dance it out once you’re sure you’ve hung up. This way, you get to release that pent-up angst once the conversation is over, but you also keep that bridge. You never know, they might call you back three months later and decide that they would like to give you a job. Most employers keep résumés on file even after an interview results in a “no” at first.