How to Land a Startup Internship
During my college years, I had internships and contract work for around 4 Startups. While working at these Startups, I got to wear different hats, communicate with internal stakeholders directly, and explore the different tech roles. These tech roles included front-end engineering, iOS Development, Product Design, UX Design and more.
The skills you develop working at these Startups are invaluable, the culture is amazing. You make great friends & connections.
One of my friends from college recently asked me how I landed all these Startup internships. I wanted to say luck, but as I look back, there were several reasons why I got them, not to mention that 3 out of 4 of these internships were through internal refferals.
However, now that I graduated and can look back at my journey, I can boil it down to three ways I got these internships from Startups. Just a disclaimer, this is my personal experience and everyone’s journey is different!
Three ways to land your next Startup internship:
- Saying Yes to Opportunities
- Resume
- Connections & Reputation
I’ll go more in-depth below and how each of them are important, but in my opinion, Connections & Reputation was the number one reason why I landed these opportunities.
Saying Yes to Opportunities
I cannot stress at how important it is to say yes. So many of my peers passed an opportunity because of classes and studying. I was also one of them, until I realized that experience far outweighs your GPA. Anyone can take a class and study, however, gaining experience is something that you don’t learn in class.
Even though I was stressed during finals and midterms week, I always remembered that the reason why I am in college is to get a job, not an A.
Also, saying yes doesn’t apply to just job opportunities. If you are in college, say yes to volunteering, clubs, hackathons and more! You will find good energy in these events and may even land you an offer in the future.
Resume
Perfecting your Resume is so important. Make sure a lot of people look at your resume before you pass it onto recruiters.
Investing some money on a resume is worth it. I personally used Zety and Canva to make my resume look good. Recruiters look at hundreds of resumes a day and if your resume looks clean and is mistake-free, it makes a huge difference. I once had a recruiter from Adobe thank me for having a resume that was easy to scan with icons and legible font sizes.
Startups are also impressed with good resumes. Cold-emailing a Startup is a good way to get in contact with them. I once emailed a Startup near my university explaining how excited I would be to work on their product and that I would love to learn from them. We connected and I got that internship!
Connections & Reputation
3 out of the 4 Startup work I landed were through internal references. And by internal references, I mean they knew me on a personal level and knew my work ethics. I didn’t ask them for an internship, but when their companies were hiring, they remembered me from my work I did with them.
One of the Startup positions I got was from someone in my Physics class who I studied with. She dropped out of college and started a company and asked me to join her. Another was through a friend from Society of Women Engineers, SWE club. Also, I landed another internship from someone I met at a previous contract work which was ending soon.
Basically study groups, college clubs, and even your previous work places can land you on your next internship or job. Just work hard and have genuine friendships with the people around you!
Good luck 😀
P.S. Comment below if you’ve recently watched or are watch Start-up on Netflix! I went on a binge watch recently, it’s an amazing K-drama!
