What Are The Best Times Of The Year To Apply For Internships?
Internships are vital opportunities to grow professionally and personally during college or university. Whether you are looking for semester long internships, summer opportunities or micro-internships, there are specific times throughout the year employers are actively hiring. Let’s explore what times of year you should be applying for internships to ensure you don’t start too soon or too late.
Internships and Co-Op’s
Internships can be paid or unpaid and can last the entire semester (typically 15 weeks) or a shorter period of time, such as the summer, which tends to be 12 weeks, or three months. Internships can be full-time, i.e. 40 hours a work week, or can be part-time, i.e. less than 40 hours a week.
If you’re enrolled in a cooperative education program, your university or college will have specific program guidelines as to what counts as a co-op and when you should be on co-op so that you continue to make academic progress towards completing your degree. At the university I teach at, co-ops must be paid, full-time and specifically related to a student’s major and the employer must designate a full-time employee to act as a mentor and manager to the student.
Employers will often use the terminology co-op and internship interchangeably to mean any student work experience executed in alignment with an academic program. So when looking for student experiences, be open to both job titles that include internships and co-ops as you search for positions. For the sake of this article, I will use the term internship to mean any professional student work experience.
Summer Internships
Summer opportunities are by far the most competitive student experiences to go out for. Since most students take classes during the traditional academic year (Fall and Spring semester), that leaves the Summer semester (May-August) as the natural choice for an internship period.
If you go to a university or college that offers summer classes, you may want to consider finding internships in the Fall or Spring semesters, as the competition is less for these terms. Especially, if you are a younger student with little academic or professional experience, it can be hard to compete for Summer internships so don’t- try for another term first!
For Summer, the bigger the employer or the more competitive the organization, the earlier they start their hiring process. For very competitive employers like Apple, Facebook, Wells Fargo etc. recruitment for Summer internship programs will actually start in Fall semester. So let’s say you want to intern at Disney in Summer 2024, you will likely see applications open in the Summer of 2023 and interviewing and hiring taking place in Fall 2023.
So what does this mean for you, the student? Well firstly, if you are interested in a super competitive summer internship, you need to educate yourself about timelines and processes. Every employer will be different, so you need to be aware of deadlines and important milestones of the hiring process so you don’t miss anything.
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Secondly, you will need to have a very solid foundation of coursework, volunteer experiences, on-campus leadership and memberships, certifications, academic projects and/or previous work experience represented on your resume BEFORE applying to the internship role. That means you will need to be advanced in your college experience i.e. not a first or second year student.
Let’s take our Disney example from above. If you want to intern in Summer 2024, you will need to start applying in Summer/Fall of 2023. That means, you will need to have taken classes and built up your resume the academic year(s) before that starting in Fall of 2022 or even Fall 2021.
So as you can see, if a third or fourth year student with a strong resume and previous experience is applying to competitive positions as early as one year in advance, as a first or second year student, it’s really, really hard to compete against these students.
Fall and Spring Internships
Understanding your industry's busy times is also important when strategizing your internship job search. For example, an accounting firm’s busy season is typically the Spring term (January through April or May). So accounting majors should plan on doing internships in the Spring semester when the work is plentiful enough for employers to seek interns.
A great way to learn more about your industry is through informational interviews with professors, school alumni or even peers a little more advanced than you. Check out our article on Creative Conversation Starters For Authentic Networking if you need help on how to connect with folks professionally.
Once you sort out your busy seasons and have identified your desired internship semester, it’s time to create a job search strategy. Most colleges and universities have a Fall and/or Spring career fair. This is the single most important time you have to connect with lots of employers at the same time in the same room. If you’ve never been to a career fair before, check out our post 15 Point Checklist To Preparing For College and University Career Fairs so you know what to expect and how to prepare.
Career fairs, on-campus info sessions and networking conversations are great ways to get internship opportunities or at least get more information on the hiring process and what the employer is looking for.
Micro-Experiences and Everything Else
One of the advantages of being a student is that your schedule resets every semester so there might be semesters where you have loads of free time to incorporate an internship or semesters where you barely have time to sleep.
Micro-experiences, gig jobs and part-time opportunities can come at any time from any one. For example, say you are talking with your uncle during a family gathering during the holidays and he is looking for someone to manage his social media accounts for his private plumbing business. You’re a marketing major and you think, wow, this might be a great chance to build up my resume a little bit, help out my family and get paid? I’m in!
Experiences like this can come and go anytime, so always be prepared to talk about your professional interests, what type of work you are looking for and what you are able to offer a potential employer. If you want to ensure your resume and LinkedIn are in a good place and your interview skills are top notch, check out our online course Find a Job Fast: The Job Search Accelerator For Career Professionals!
Related:
Find a Job Fast: The Job Search Accelerator For Career Professionals
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Meet The Writer!
Hi! My name is Nadia Ibrahim-Taney and I help people design happy and fulfilling careers through authentic career coaching. My expertise includes career exploration guidance, resume writing, interview prep and LinkedIn profile optimization. My pronouns are She/ Her/ Hers and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I focus on how diverse identities impact and influence folks holistically and professionally. Please connect with me on LinkedIn or at Nadia@beyonddiscoverycoaching.com
