The art of finding summer internships? Forum

[BarbellDreams]

I have a friend who is a 2L at NU and he told me finding a summer internship wasnt too hard. Granted he is at NU, but he basically said apply early, dont depend on OCI to land you something, work with someone on your resume and cover letters, contact anyone you know to see if they know anyone, send out cover letters and resumes everywhere, hound your career center constantly. Thats basically it. My question are as follows:

1.) Just how early do you need to start looking? As soon as first semester grades are in?
2.) If you bomb at OCI, do you literally just start emailing HR at firms?
3.) What can your career services center do for you if you strike out at OCI except look over your resume?
4.) How do you know what looks better on your resume? Assuming all are unpaid, do you want to clerk, work for a firm, do a government PI type job, work on research, etc?

[macattaq]

I have a friend who is a 2L at NU and he told me finding a summer internship wasnt too hard. Granted he is at NU, but he basically said apply early, dont depend on OCI to land you something, work with someone on your resume and cover letters, contact anyone you know to see if they know anyone, send out cover letters and resumes everywhere, hound your career center constantly. Thats basically it. My question are as follows:

1.) Just how early do you need to start looking? As soon as first semester grades are in?

November 2nd is the first day you can start working with Career Services, and have access to job information. You can start looking on/after this date. Depending on the job, you may or may not be able to apply with just a resume and cover letter. If you can, then apply as soon as you have spruced up your resume and written a cover letter. If you have to wait until you have grades, it wouldn't hurt to make contact with the hiring personnel and talk about the job. In fact, doing this before you apply is probably a good idea, since it will help you craft your cover letter.

2.) If you bomb at OCI, do you literally just start emailing HR at firms?

I don't know yet, as I am a 1L who hasn't yet dealt with OCI. But I suspect that even if you do OCI, you could still send your resume and cover letter to firms. Just try to make them firm specific, rather than blanketing firms with the same generic documents. The downside to this is that you will probably not be able to send docs out to a large number of firms. The upside is that firms (from what I've heard) tend to junk the generic docs anyway, unless your GPA is ridiculous.

3.) What can your career services center do for you if you strike out at OCI except look over your resume?

They can help you find positions that aren't with OCI firms. Solos, small and midsize firms, public interest, etc. They can also set you up with alums who may be able to help you get your foot in the door somewhere.

4.) How do you know what looks better on your resume? Assuming all are unpaid, do you want to clerk, work for a firm, do a government PI type job, work on research, etc?

I believe, if I am not mistaken, that you want to put information on your resume that speaks to your experience in a particular area. The point of this is to show that you have some experience with that arena. So, if you are interested in public interest, emphasize activities that speak to public interest. If you want firm work, show that you have an interest in that particular area of work and/or have some legal experience (although this last one isn't necessary). Whatever you do, make the content speak to you ability to do the job. You may or may not have much to put down, if you came straight out of undergrad. So, putting down work you did in UG is acceptable. Your career services should be able to help you manipulate the wording of your prior job/volunteer descriptions so that you can make them apply more broadly, in order to make them fit into some of the categories you listed. For example, my "Resident DJ at X, Y, and Z clubs, contract DJ for ABC Events" was initially suited for getting work in entertainment. It got turned into information about recruiting and interfacing with clientele, managing a small business, and forecasting trends in the music industry. Now it speaks to firm/business work generally, and soft IP more specifically. *shrug* It is what you make of it, I guess.

HTH, but I'm sure that others have far more to say that is on point than anything I have volunteered.