Ready, Set, Intern—How students can land a perfect summer internship
Our second-year students were asking “How do we get an internship next summer?” IDEA School of Design at Capilano University responded with a Saturday workshop—Ready, Set, Intern. There’s nothing I like more than seeing students successfully enter the workplace, so I offered to host the event. First things first, I asked them “What do you want to know?” Not surprisingly, most of their questions were about how to get their portfolios ready. By the end of the day they knew that the work you show is only one part of the process.
Understanding what the internship journey looks like and all the steps along the way.
Three important steps to landing an internship
There are three important steps to landing an internship and they all involve some serious navel gazing.
Step one: know who you are and what you have to offer.
Using colour-coded stickies, the students helped one another identify their strengths and weaknesses.
Sometimes your friends know you better than you know yourself.
It’s hard to recognise your personal strengths. It’s easier with a little help from classmates.
Step two: know how to prove your worth.
The students used their stickies to help them generate an authentic summary of their skills and strengths and what makes them special. This “elevator pitch” allows them to present a consistent, professional narrative through all their “touchpoints”. They learned that these touchpoints include their résumé, portfolio, social media presence and face-to-face encounters with industry.
Piecing their story together.
Step Three: know where you fit and what you want from an internship experience.
The third part of our workshop looked at how students can research what companies are out there. What kind of company is it? What kind of work do they do? What are their values? And using their stickies, they gained a better sense of where they might fit in. I don’t think anyone coming to the workshop expected to be taught how to use Google Sheets. Keeping track of the people and companies that match your ambitions can be an invaluable tool to help manage your career.
Students figuring out where they might want to work next summer.
Step four? Dive in!
As one of my fellow instructors, Dominique Walker, tells the students “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”. Sound advice from a savvy instructor.
“IDEA School of Design—Bachelor of Design in Visual Communication at Capilano University—is a career-oriented program for the next generation of creative professionals, with concentrations in branding, illustration and interactive design. We’re located on Canada’s beautiful west coast in North Vancouver, British Columbia.”
