HOW TO: Be Involved!

Hi everyone! Here I am with my last post of the semester.  While I do not have any internship news as of yet, I am still able to leave the semester off on a good note.  I feel like everyone puts so much pressure on getting an internship and don’t get me wrong, I do as well.  But, I have recently be also focusing on my on-campus involvement.  These past few weeks I have received multiple leadership positions in organizations that I love and that I am excited to contribute to them.

Even though internships are important, I also find my impact on-campus to be important.  Especially with it being my last year as a student, I am trying to gain experience with on-campus organizations.  This is something I highly recommend to any college student.  The best way to gain experience is to be involved! I feel like a lot of my resume experience comes from the organizations that I am in on-campus.  I know that a lot of people are usually too busy during the fall and spring semesters to have an internship, so I find that on-campus involvement to be the perfect option to gain that experience.  I also think on-campus involvement is important because you get to meet people and may even find yourself in uncomfortable situations (which is a good thing!). I know it is hard to want to sign up or apply for something that your friends aren’t because then you don’t know anyone but I think you shouldn’t let that deter you from any opportunity.  My freshman year of college I applied to an organization on-campus that none of my friends applied to.  I was worried because I was only a freshman and didn’t know a lot of people as it was my first semester, but I knew that this was something that I wanted to be part of.

Now, three years later, I have made countless friends in this organization and have been able to progress to an executive board position.  Just like what I talked about in my first blog post, apply to everything - even on-campus involvement positions!  Experience is experience regardless of it being labeled as an internship or not.  My involvement has transformed my college experience and it is something that advocate for in my sorority.  

When looking for involvement on-campus, I would highly recommend looking at both positions that you are interested in as well as organizations that you would want to get involved with.  You want to make sure that you are passionate about what you are doing.  For example, since I am interested in content creation, I mostly apply for social media or public relations positions.  I feel like I wouldn’t have been the same person without my involvement and I highly recommend that everybody does something.  I love that I am able to look back on time in college and know that I was able to do something on-campus and contribute to the university.  Involvement rocks!

HOW TO: Accept Rejection

Recently, I was lucky enough to be selected to interview for a dream company.  I made it to the final round and really felt like that I was going to receive an offer, but alas I got rejected.  Rejection is hard especially when you make it to the final round for a company.  It raises the questions of why did they waste my time, what went wrong, etc.  But, after a few weeks I realized that rejection isn’t as bad as it seems.  Yes, I would’ve loved to be able to work for this company and I kind of got my hopes up because I made it to the final round.  I would like to provide some advice on how I was able to see the positive side of being rejected from this internship.

First of all, change your mindset. I do feel like my time was wasted because I made it to the final round, but I also have to realize how impressive it was to even make it to the final round.  Also, the interviews weren’t a waste of my time because it is great interview practice.  Interviews can be very scary no matter how many times you may do them, so I think being able to do multiple interviews for this internship was a great way to learn more ways to answer questions, conduct myself in interviews, etc.  When I took the time to apply, I wrote a resume and a cover letter which has now given me the tools to continue to pursue other opportunities.  This goes back to my first blog post, apply to everything.  I think it is best not to put all of your eggs in one basket.  When I was interviewing for this internship, I continued to apply to other internships.  I think this also helped me get over the rejection faster as well.  Even though the rejection was hard, I was able to continue my job search seamlessly and look for other opportunities that I am excited about.  

As I continue my internship hunt for the summer, I have been trying to refine my resume as well as my cover letter.  Both of these are very important documents when applying to internships and jobs.  It is hard to keep applying to things and never hearing back or just getting flat out rejected without an interview.  The first step to being successful in a job search is to not let every little thing discourage you.  I know that it is the season where everyone is very excitedly announcing their internship plans for the summer, but you also have to think about how many rejections that they must’ve gotten before they got their opportunity.  People do not like to talk about rejection because they see it as a negative situation, but I feel quite the opposite.  Rejection is a positive because it allows you to learn and grow, as well as seek out opportunities that you may have missed previously.  It is okay to get rejected and it is even better to use your rejection as motivation.

HOW TO: Cold Email!

Hey everyone!

I'm back with another blog post about networking.  This week's topic is about cold emailing because this is something that I just recently did for the first time.  A cold email is a an initial email that is sent in order to benefit from it.  Cold emails are useful because they can get you in contact with someone within the industry that you are interested in.  Usually what you want to accomplish with a cold email is to set up an informational interview to learn about what they do, how they got there, and opportunities that they may have for you.  

When cold emailing someone, make sure to come off as polite as possible.  Start with saying I hope all is well!, I hope you are doing well., etc. This is a good way to start your email and then you can introduce yourself.  In your introduction, put your name, major, year in college, and what college that you go to.  I also included what field I was interested in.  After introducing yourself, you can then go in and ask to meet with them to learn more about them and their industry.  Remember this is just an "informational interview", not a job interview.  This is just to meet someone within the industry.  When putting a subject for this email I would go with something along the lines of: Hello, Inquiry, etc.  I did Hello for my most recent cold email and it worked perfectly!

It is very scary to be randomly emailing people that are in the industry that you are interested in, but this is a great way to build your network!  My first "informational interview" is next week and I am very excited for it.  Now that I have secured this interview from cold emailing, I now need to apply research about the person interviewing and the company that they work out.  I am trying to maximize the most opportunity from this informational interview and I think it is best if I come in knowing what types of questions I ask.

This can be said for any informational interview that anybody would participate it.  To prepare, first look into the company that they work for.  Look at the companies values, code of ethics, and work that they have put out.  What type of presence on do they have on social media? I think this is a great way to have a better understanding of the type of company you could potentially be working for whether that be for an internship or a job.  Next, look at the interviewers LinkedIn.  What type of experience do they have? Have they also worked at this company? Where did they go to school? Something that I highly recommend is trying to find something that you have in common with the person you are interviewing.  This way, you could be more memorable in your interview rather than just being another college student looking for a job/internship.  Having this type of insight will make you overly prepared for your "informational interview" (which is what you want!).  Good luck with cold emailing!

HOW TO: Find jobs/internships that you are qualified for!

         With it being the start of the spring semester, I feel like everyone is scrambling to apply for a summer internship if they haven’t already done so during the fall semester.  Having a summer internship is especially important if you are a rising junior or senior in college because it helps you form connections to hopefully get a job out of college.  In my first ever blog post, I wanted to talk about this topic because I just received another part-time job offer.  I think something that is never talked about is how to apply properly and how to interview correctly (these will be coming as a blog post soon!) for a job.  

          When looking for a job or an internship while being in college, I think it is important to apply to three different things: a job/internship that you are overqualified for, a job/internship that you are under qualified for, and a job/internship that you are exactly qualified for.  I personally think it is better to have the mindset of “go big or go home” when applying for a job/internship that you may want.  Being under qualified for a position does not mean you cannot be an ideal candidate for that specific role.  When I say under qualified, I mean in the sense that it is still attainable with your experience.  To make this make more sense, I think it would be beneficial to pull up three roles that fit these criteria for me:

Over-qualified

Under-qualified

Exactly-qualified

           Above, I have chosen three jobs/internships that I have found on LinkedIn.  When looking at these jobs/internships, I considered my resume and my skillset when deciding on which category each of these went into.  For the overqualified internship, I think I am overqualified after reading through the job description because I am proficient in the Adobe Suite (I am certified in both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro while having experience with using Adobe After Effects, all apps that they named in the description), I am able to assist in long-form edits (at my last internship I worked on editing together 30 minute long episodes).  I am not going to go through all the reasons that I think I am overqualified for this position because that is not the point of this post.  

          The point of this post is to help you understand the first stage of finding a job/internship that you should be applying for.  I don’t think anyone should ever sell themselves short when it comes to job/internships, but I also think you shouldn’t be cocky.  I mistake I’ve seen far too often is that when people think they are overqualified, they got cocky and think they are above a job/internship.  When starting the process of looking for a job/internship I highly recommend (and I cannot stress this enough) to never think you have something in the bag.  No matter how qualified you are for something, it never means that you have it.  I think this is a good mindset to have from the very start so you don’t feel disappointed if you don’t hear anything back, don’t get an interview, etc.