Finding an Engineering Internship
As an engineering student, we are fortunate to get paid for our internships while gaining great experience. Having an internship actually let’s us apply some of our classes to real world applications – but you probably already know that. Here’s all the steps I have taken to procure internships and what worked for me.
1.) Go to your career fair. If there is a school (or better yet, college of engineering) career fair, go to it. Companies hiring biomedical engineers at my school are generally lacking and there are few that pertain to my interests. However, career fairs are at least a good stepping stone. Many people are successful at getting a job or internship by supplying their resumes and interviewing but there are many more people who walk away with just a professional practice experience. Don’t stop here on your search.
2.) Go to your career center. These people are trained to find you a job. Enough said. They’ll likely be able to point you in some specific directions that will be unique from school to school or have developed relationships with a few companies that love hiring interns and entry-level engineers from your school.
3.) Network. This is a great way to find an internship and (usually) one of the most succesful ways to get a job. The first place to start would be close friends or relationships. However, that option is not available to most of us. The next best thing: professors. Besides doing research themselves, they may have come to teach after some experience in industry or work closely with companies in their research.
4.) Another variation on networking: Look to businesses closely related with your school. Though this could be a big company that hires a batch of interns everywhere, there might be other places worth inspecting. Many universities have experience with technology transfer, small business incubation, entrepreneurial programs, etc. This ties may mean that there are small engineering businesses working intimately with the university and, oftentimes, they may work with university faculty. You have an enormous advantage when looking for an internship with these companies because they know your curriculum, they know what to expect from you, and they have loyal bonds with the university.
5.) Cruise the internet. Look at companies where your school sends graduates or interns. Look at other university websites and find companies that hire their students. Look at government websites. Sometimes, companies don’t actively advertise their internships or go to career fairs. Almost every company I’ve looked at related to biomedical engineering, for example, hires interns but many of them do not advertise their internships AT ALL other than on their “career” web pages. This might be some of the tougher internships to get but it doesn’t hurt accumulating a bunch of opportunities and doing research into those companies’ programs.
6.) Combine! Sometimes, the best way to get an internship is to be doing all of this simultaneously. That’s how I landed mine. For example, there was a small company that was founded by two engineering graduates from my university. I checked out their website and I talked with a professor that I had had for a class because he is one of their scientific advisers. In fact, I even went to my career center at the college of engineering to dig a little bit deeper into the company. I can report that I am happily partaking in a summer internship with them right now.
Anything that I missed? I’m sure these aren’t the only strategies and I’m curious what other people have done to land their internships.
July 8, 2009
Tags: business, Career, engineering, internship Posted in: Career, College
Leave a Reply