As Spring Break deliciously inches closer, it brings with it an inevitable maddening task.
Applying to internships.
Lots of them.
Which is even more unfortunate because I’ve only applied to two so far.
The process is a lot more complicated than I originally imagined. It’s not just selecting a bunch of companies and shooting out your resume at them blindly praying something will stick.
I mean, you could do that but boy will you need to cover some ground, just in terms of sheer quantity.
And like I mentioned, I’ve only completed two applications yet.
Instead, I’ve been advised to make a custom application for each opening. Which makes sense. If you really want to work there, at least let that shine through.
Of course it lengthens the process by magnitudes.
This past Tuesday, LILAC (Leadership, Innovation, and Liberal Arts Center) connected us with Thanh-Trang Hoang-Le, a recent alum who is now working at MaassMedia in Philadelphia.
Among all the ridiculously helpful insights she had, one thing she said really stuck out, “no one will hire a super qualified person everyone hates.”
Which just helped ground me. In this mad dash to apply to X number of firms in X number of days, it can be really easy to forget that we are dealing primarily with humans.
And showing them that you are human too is really important.