Not a basic summer: finding an internship
3 min readBy MEGAN EICHENBERG
With three months left on the calendar until May, many companies and corporations are already seeking interns to fill their empty cubicles and take on professional responsibilities over the summer.
While some major summer internship programs had application deadlines in January and February, there are several resources located on campus and beyond where students can turn to locate internships with cut-off dates that extend into March.
Here’s an overview of a few places to look to jumpstart the internship search:
UMW Office of Career Services
Located in Lee Hall 308, the Office of Career Services maintains internship postings that specifically target University of Mary Washington students. The openings are posted on UMW’s eRecruiting Experience web site, which consists of a database students can use to seek out internships by major or employer industry.
Students also can upload their resumes to the site and sign up to register for Career Services’ workshops, such as the Feb. 15 “Knock ‘Em Dead in the Interview” and the Feb. 17 “Resume Writing from A-Z” seminars.
Department Web sites
Most of the 22 academic departments showcase internship opportunities on their web pages. While the featured internships are mostly department or field specific, following up on a listing may lead to additional opportunities for other majors within the company.
The department of historic preservation links to both paid and unpaid internships across the nation.
The department of political science and international affairs maintains a recent internships page that goes back to 2003, while the department of English has an inventory of 90 past academic internship sites under the careers portion of its web site.
The Economics department web page features a list of past student internships that also includes personal accounts from students describing their experiences as an intern for companies like The Washington Capitals Hockey Club, Virginia Credit Union and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Internship Web sites
The Office of Career Services web site provides several links organized by career field to internship search web sites.
For students contemplating signing a 12-month lease to remain in Fredericksburg over the summer, area specific web sites include www.VirginiaIntern.com and www.Washingtondcintern.com, both part of USA Intern, LLC, which has internship web sites for each state in the nation.
www.USAJobs.gov/studentjobs is the student-centered Federal government’s official job listing site. It has a large inventory of job openings across the United States.
The site also outlines the different types of Federal student employment, including summer employment, internships, volunteer service, two types of Student Educational Employment Programs and the Federal Career Intern Program.
Apprenticeships, cooperatives, fellowships, grants and scholarships also are featured on the site.
Government agencies with current listings on the site include the Small Business Administration, Office of Veterans Affairs and National Park Service.
Several companies, organizations and news outlets have accounts on Twitter, the microblogging web site that enables users to communicate through concise text based messages.
The Washington Post has an account at www.twitter.com/dcinternjobs, where internships in the DC Metro area are publicized. The job title and location are listed, followed by a link to the full position announcement.
The Department of the State, Verizon, NBC Universal, Disney, CBS, Fox, and the WB each have accounts specifically devoted to job and internship postings within their companies at sites across the United States.
A search using the keywords “careers” and “internships” yields several other organizations and personal accounts devoted to the employment search where job hunters can skim through feeds of 140 character or less opening announcements.
