Human Resources
How I Took My Internship Process to a HireLevel: Do You Have a Game Plan?
Jun 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016
Finding an internship tailored to your immediate and long term goals can be challenging, and time consuming. Since there aren’t many unique internship opportunities tailored to my major, Industrial and Organization Psychology which is the study of human behavior in the workplace, did not help. I needed to be creative, as well as do my own research on how I could build the right path toward a career that adequately trained me both academically, and professionally. After all, regardless of your major, work experience is never underestimated.
Think About Your Goals
Thinking about your goals, and mapping out your objectives is very important. Knowing how much time your schedule allows, creates the foundation for choosing an ideal internship. Since becoming a full-time student, the idea of doing an internship became more prominent especially since I was going to have more free time to do so. While the idea of having more time to study and have a social life were nice, I wanted to make sure that I had a great platform to learn from before beginning my career after graduation.
Where and How to Look
Now that I had a solid foundation, it was time to begin my search. Google is always a great place to start, because it provided me with a broad lens when looking into the world of internships. With the use of key words, and some in depth research I chose to invest more time looking at internships.com and Indeed Jobs. Creating accounts was a painless experience. Internships.com is a website that allows you to search for an internship by category, location, or company. It also acts as a student resource to answer frequently asked questions about internships such as “What is an internship?” and “How do I find an internship?” While this source is a great one, it wasn’t the right one for me. While it was convenient to have new internships emailed to me, it wasn’t convenient to have multiple emails sent a day with internships that didn’t match what I was looking for. This led me to searching on Indeed.com. This is an employment search engine that finds a match for you based on what type of position you’re looking for, and where you are located. The best part about this search engine is there’s an app for that! My search with Indeed offered many jobs of interest that would be perfect once I had gained some experience and graduated. Also, it provided the lens to turn and focus on exactly what I wanted to look for in an internship. I wanted something that was going to give me the work experience that an ideal future career would require.
Networking
If you would have asked me four months ago how beneficial networking would be to find an internship, I would have said not very. However, contrary to my beliefs, this became my number one tool to eventually find and love the internship I am currently doing at HireLevel, powered by Extra Help. It is so important to use social media and networking, whether it be online or at a career fair to your professional advantage. Being able to connect with HireLevel on Facebook and get a feel for their culture made me want to work there. I saw a post on my Facebook newsfeed advertising that HireLevel was looking for HR Interns for their St. Louis, MO location. I reached out to the contact and scheduled an interview. Their HR internship provides the opportunity to learn and experience each team member’s role and how their work contributes to the overall goal of providing excellent service to their clients.
I finally feel that I am on the right path toward a career and will be adequately trained on a professional platform. Being open minded and creative while never underestimating the power of networking is definitely something to keep in mind while searching for an internship. I highly recommend checking out HireLevel and their internship opportunities. Contact them directly at hello@hirelevel.com!