Getting Your Dream Internship

Hi, friends!

Today’s post is going to be the first of many offerings on career advice, or “pre-career” advice, if there is such a thing (hey, maybe I just invented it?). As a soon-to-be graduate, I – like many of you - have spent the previous three years of my life not only spending sleepless nights worrying about assignment grades and word counts, but filling the blissful gaps between these periods of stress with… internships. That’s right, not holidays, internships. Long hours of unpaid (and, occasionally, unappreciated) work in the name of personal development and application enhancement. That’s a rather pessimistic way of looking at things, I know, and it’s not all doom and gloom. Many internships that I have completed have given me some really great experience and allowed me to develop tonnes of skills that I can now validate with supporting evidence on my CV.

So, as someone who has well and truly conquered the internship field (been there, done that, got the t-shirt, several times over) I thought it may be useful to offer up some advice on finding that dream placement, that one opportunity that could shape the entirety of your future career. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve hastily yet meticulously drafted a new cover letter, tailored my CV and applied to a role that I consider to be my “dream internship”: taking deep breaths to steady my nerves as I pressed that fateful “Apply” button. It sounds dramatic, I know, but if you’re career-minded, like me, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about: the feeling of having to coerce your heart into beating again – just in case you really do get this job!

As a communications student interested in pursuing a career in Marketing/PR, I opted for internships that I hoped would give my application the edge when applying for roles in this field. To date, I have completed a PR & VIP Internship for a world-famous fashion house, a PR Internship for a small communications agency, an Online Content Internship for a social nightlife platform and an Events Marketing Internship for the UK’s biggest cancer charity, to name a few. I completed all of these in the hopes that, eventually, my idea of what I wanted to do after graduating would finally start to narrow down: whittling away silly whims and unlikely dreams in the process. And, to some extent, that’s exactly what happened. I left university with a firmer idea of what sector I was interested in (PR) and even turned away a few further education scholarships in favour of finally embarking on my career.

So... Why am I telling you this? Because, as with many things in life, there’s a catch. You can probably guess from the above list which internship I was most excited for: which one I was most ecstatic to get, which one I truly thought would shape my future (I'll give you a hint, it wasn't my brief stint in a coffee shop). Of course, it was the PR & VIP Internship with the internationally-renowned fashion designer. And… which one did I end up disliking the most, feeling utterly defeated at the end of each day, dreading the next morning in the office? You guessed it, the very same one that I’d been so blissfully excited about just a few short weeks before.  

And so, fellow interns, the catch is this: you really can’t know which placement is your dream placement until you’re there. I know, it sucks, but that’s the truth of the matter. The expression “you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter” springs to mind here, because – unfortunately – that’s exactly what happens with many internships these days. Sometimes, companies are simply after some free labour, loading their hopeful intern’s plates with all of the donkey work they don’t want to complete themselves, despite cramming the role description full of false promises of real responsibility and great rewards. Sometimes, as an intern, you’re only there to get your hands dirty doing the boring, monotonous tasks that those superior to you deem themselves to be above doing. It’s a situation that many students find themselves in, but we stick at it in the hopes of it bettering our chances of employment afterwards.

So, what am I trying to say with all this? What does my lengthy rant about professional inequality really teach us? I would say the main lesson to take away from my experiences is thus: there’s no such thing as a dream internship. At least not initially, anyway. The role I thought would complete my dreams actually ended up breaking my spirit, and others that I had to convince myself to apply for out of sheer disinterest actually ended up giving me some fantastic experiences and invaluable connections. So, what I’m trying to say is this: don’t shy away from those job ads that don’t immediately grab you because its not in beauty or fashion or whatever industry you ultimately see yourself ending up in. Don’t disregard roles within smaller, lesser-known companies in favour of household names. Try anything and everything, because you really never know what each experience will teach you. For me, it worked out that a placement I had to apply for as part of my degree ended up paving the way for my career. You simply never know. So, keep applying! I know the job-hunt is a long and lengthy process, full of self-doubt and the occasional panic tears, but something will come along eventually and, even if it’s the thing you’re least excited about, it could just be the making of you.

Good Luck, fellow interns!

E x