Peer Career Consultant Blogs

Before you start your internship search, update your resume and prepare to fail. Many students have to apply to 20 or more positions before they even hear back for an interview so don’t get disheartened when you do not hear back from all of the companies you apply to. Once you are prepared to begin the application process, there are 3 main places I would go to search for your internship: LinkedIn, online job portals, and in-person career fairs. 

Linkedin: If you are not 100% sure what you would like to do for your internship, go through Linkedin to make connections and ask questions. While you could use LinkedIn like all of the other job search sites, I would recommend you use it to expand your knowledge on companies or positions. Go to the SCU LSB Linkedin page and search for the company you would like to work for in the alumni tab. You will find SCU alumni within that company who have various levels of experience and from there, you can choose who to reach out to based on your career goals. By being a student, you have an advantage with alumni, as many of them are willing to tell you about their experiences and their day to day activities in order to help you make a decision on where to apply. Through the conversations you have, you will learn new things and make new connections, and you might even meet the person who introduces you to a recruiter or vouches for you when you apply. 

Online Job Portals: In this day and age, all companies looking for candidates post their open positions online. A simple search of “Finance internships in Santa Clara” will bring up Google Jobs - a place with hundreds of job openings with their company, title, qualifications, responsibilities, and expected pay range. SCU also has their own job portal called Handshake. This free job search platform is meant for SCU students to take advantage of. They ask for your graduation year, skills, and experience, and give you jobs that fit your parameters. Once you look at the open positions and determine which companies or responsibilities match what you are looking for, either go through the connected websites (ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, etc.) or go through the “apply now” part of the company website and apply directly through them. 

In person Career center, Career fairs: The last, and arguably most important, place you should look for internships is at SCU career fairs. The SCU career center, Accounting Association club, and Women in Business club all host their own career fairs throughout the school year. Coming to these career fairs allows you to get face time with recruiters and potential employers and has a much higher success rate than just submitting your resume. You get to show your personality and see if you mesh well with the employees at the company. In the end, an interview is as much a test to see how well you fit with the company as it is a test of how well the company will fit for you. By meeting recruiters at these events, you create connections and learn more about the company culture than you would ever learn from reading about a company online.