To preface this, I’m a senior graphic design main set to graduate this December. If I’m able to discover an internship for this summer time, I’ll solely must take two lessons within the fall (if not, then 4). I’ve no expertise apart from faculty, and I’ve actively been making use of for distant and in-person positions since December 2022 (and earlier than that, between Feb-Could 2022 as nicely). So far, I’ve utilized to over 40 positions, all of which have both been graphic design, advertising/communications, social media, or associated internship alternatives. I’ve moved forth with the interview course of on over half of the roles I’ve utilized for, and have obtained optimistic suggestions about each my interview abilities and portfolio from every employer. Regardless of all of this, I’ve had zero luck in really getting employed.
I do know grades do not essentially replicate high quality of labor, however I’ve been a straight A scholar for the previous three semesters in a row. Most of my classmates can’t say the identical, but they themselves have had internships since final yr. I am nearly at my wit’s finish with this course of. To the whole group: **what can I do to truly land a summer time internship as a designer (or one thing related)?**
We can do a little detective style deduction here. If you have had 20 interviews then the first thing we can deduce is that there is nothing at all wrong with your resume or your portfolio. They have been adequate enough to demonstrate that you have the base-level abilities that most firms are looking for in an intern. They wouldn’t have called you in otherwise.
Therefore, whatever is going wrong is down to one of three things:
1) Your answers to interview questions
2) Your general personality, energy or appearance
3) Luck (it may be possible, though statistically unlikely, that all 20 firms you interviewed with have just had a large number of applicants and happened to find one they thought would be a better fit than you through no fault of your own).
Might as well forget #3 since you can’t control it, but you can take a candid look at #1 and #2 and ask yourself honestly if there’s something going on there.
I’m interviewing candidates for intern positions as we speak (I’ve actually gone through fifteen portfolios today) so maybe I can give you some small insight into what the firms are looking for.
Presuming they are decent, honest firms and not just looking for some cheap summer labor or a coffee-runner, they are offering an internship position in the hopes that they will come across an individual that they can offer a full-time position to at the end of the internship. An internship is actually a smart way for a company to work with someone for several months and assess whether they’ll do well as an employee without being locked in to having to actually hire them and let them go if they don’t work out.
With an intern you can come to the end of the summer and be like “you are awesome and we want to hire you full time” or “thanks for everything and good luck!” and it’s great either way.
In order to access this benefit, a good company needs to make sure your intern experience is a great one, because they want to mold you into the perfect fit for their specific culture and process and have you excited to stay with them at the end of it all. The tldr is, they are in it for selfish reasons but it’s not really underhanded because you will get legitimate mentoring and experience out of it. It needs to be a win-win for both parties.
So I guess now you understand where they are coming from, perhaps you can think back over your 20 interviews and ask yourself, “what did the firm see and hear that made them not choose me?”. It could be something as simple as you seeming too eager about a branch of design that’s different than what they do (i.e. you talk passionately about illustration or social media but they are a corporation that has very little need for those skills). It could be that they don’t think you’ll enjoy yourself there and won’t accept an offer at the end of it all. It could be that you’re lacking positive energy and passion, or even something like personal upkeep (I’ve seen plenty of candidates where I was like “man that guy would have been a great fit but he smelled of weed” etc.)
So yep, it’s look in the mirror time – be brutally honest with yourself and adjust your interview approach as necessary.
I got mine through word of mouth. If your classmates already have internships, maybe you can ask one of them for a referral.
If your design program is essentially requiring an internship (or even just in lieu of 2 other courses), then your profs should be providing better guidance. Have you talked to any of them?
I mean in my program an internship was required for a specific course, but as a result the program actually would provide a (randomly assigned) placement, where you would still go and interview with the company but essentially you had an internship. If you didn’t like the company you got (or for some reason it wasn’t going to work), then you could find your own or keep tabs with the profs should any other students not use theirs.
This list was also compiled by the program sending out requests to companies that had previously provided internships along with prior graduates out in the field. After graduation I would get an email sporadically every couple years asking if I wanted to be added, which I guess they sent out if their list was getting too short.
So even if your program isn’t doing things as structured as that, I would still ensure you are reaching out to your profs for help and guidance, as well as insight into how your classmates are doing it (you can also talk to them too).
Otherwise, aside from what Dead_See said, it’s pretty much left to just a numbers game, to do what you’ve been doing but more so. 40 positions seems like a lot, but if that’s also since December, that’s only about 10 per month. Are these just to actual posted positions? Internships are low risk, often low-paying (or non-paying), and by default short term (1-4 months). Much more so than with actual professional positions, it’s more acceptable to just be cold-calling places, just find out if they have any internal design staff, if you could connect with who runs the design department, if they ever offer internships or potentially have an opening.
A lot of internships are filled through networking, not postings. (My above description of how my college did it would count as networking, for example.)