Internships: What to Do While You Wait

Photo by Shannon Deuel

So you’ve sent in your summer internship applications and maybe you’ve had your first round interviews… now what? Checking your email every five minutes is not going to help you land your internship any faster – and it kills your battery. Waiting is hard and it may be painful at times to see your friends receive feedback from their internships, but don’t worry. Valley has some things you can do while you wait to hear back from your summer internships that will help the time pass by.

Keep Applying

Just because you may have a had a first round interview for a potential internship doesn’t mean you should stop applying to others. It is potential for a reason – nothing is set in stone. Applying to more internships doesn’t hurt because the worst thing they can say is ‘no’. Interqueen.com and Indeed.com are great sources to find internships that may also catch your interest while you wait.

Know When to Follow-Up

One of the many tricks of applying to internships is to know how to get them to remember you. This doesn’t mean to constantly email them about the status of your application. This will only cause them to remember you in a negative way. Follow-up with one email about 1-2 weeks after your first interview to check what your status is. The email should be polite and respectful to show professionalism and maturity. Avoid sounding pushy or needy because this will reflect negatively on your application.

Keep up your GPA

Internship employers may have a long way to go before they reach your application and you want to make sure that the GPA you put on your resume matches — or exceeds — your GPA at the end of the semester. Studying and keeping up with your work will also help keep your mind off of checking your emails and will make time go by quicker. Also, keep in mind that some internships will require a 3.0 GPA depending if it is for school credit.

Know When to Move On

This tip is the most important one because waiting on something that may not happen will hinder you from finding new opportunities. If you receive an offer from another internship that may not be your dream job, you may turn it down because your preferred choice hasn’t contacted you. Even if you aren’t offered an internship in your field of choice, you may still learn a new skill after the internship is over and you may even want to purse that instead of your dream job.

Yes, waiting to hear back from internships is a long, stressful road, but distracting yourself in other productive ways will help the time go by and may even lead to a new internship that you didn’t even know existed.