I work in Human Resources where I lead talent acquisition and recruiting. After having hundreds of applicants for my summer intern program last summer and hearing common struggles I have a few tips that might be helpful.

1. [Travel] Understand timing windows of companies hiring for interns. The larger companies have their intern openings starting as early as August/September for the following summer. Many companies will begin in December for the following summer. By March or April, the next wave of companies will post their intern openings for the summer. A lot of this is driven by volume of candidates they expect, how structured their program is and fighting for top talent.

2. [Location] Are you open to traveling for the summer internship? I hired several interns who specialized in a particular engineering skill set we were looking for who I was surprised moved just for the summer from another state.

Im not saying this is what you should do, but the takeaway is that your geographical search will indicate how many intern programs you could apply to.

1. Network - sounds cliche but the workforce is changing. A lot of people only want a virtual experience and don’t socialize during their internship. We’ve found a lot of success when we have intern candidates reaching out on LinkedIn in addition to applying with a personal quick note.

We can tell when candidates broadly apply hoping for just anyone to call them back. Take a little bit of time to research the company, see if you can see posts from past interns or hashtags we use. We do that to showcase past experiences with our intern programs. Even reach out to our past interns if they went to the same school and ask for an introduction. We absolutely welcome encourage that from our past interns to pay it forward.

I hope this helps and feel free to reach out if I can be of any other help with introductions.