Category Archives: Jennifer

The Best Piece of Advice I Can Give You

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There’s less than one week left until summer break! Whoooooooooo!!!

I hope you’ve found my blog posts helpful this semester and that this last blog post inspires you to not quit during your career search, despite how tough it can be.

Two summers ago, I had my very first internship at a governmental agency. After the day was over, I went home and cried all night because I thought that everyone hated me. Despite being too scared to return, I managed to get on a train to Downtown LA the next morning and act as if nothing happened. The rest of my internship experience was phenomenal.

Last summer, I didn’t end up crying after my first day of work, but I was extremely worried that I set a bad first impression with my boss because I was being too annoying. I did end up crying during in my office during one of my lunch breaks one day because I had made a really huge mistake, but I made sure that no one saw me and that I continued doing my work after lunch was over. One of the assistants came over to talk to me later and asked if I was okay because I looked as if I had been crying, but I assured him that I was completely fine. It worked.

As an intern, I try not to make mistakes. Ever. And when I do, it’s often very dramatic because I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I don’t how the work assigned to me is meant to be done, I’ve made a huge mistake, or I behaved in a way that didn’t accurately represent who I was. In the future, I’ll probably still freak out over mistakes I make, but I’ve always laughed at how dramatic I acted when I thought I’d be fired on the spot for my mistakes.

The point is that one bad day won’t define your entire internship or job experience. I never gave up on any internship I’ve had, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if I had listened to my overly dramatic self many months ago.

I hope you have a great summer!

How to be Adaptable

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Everyone talks about elevator pitches and the 7 seconds it takes to form an impression of a candidate. Often times, students don’t have the ability to practice impromptu speaking because of the lack of opportunities available in college. Here’s a thought: If you think of the number of new people you meet each week in college, you’ll find that you’re constantly introducing yourself to people who will, just like an employer, make some judgment about you. Use these opportunities to practice speaking to people who all have different personality types. In my opinion, this is key for interviews, especially if you’re interviewing with many different people.

1) Pay attention to the body language of the person you’re speaking to

Is the person really expressive? Is she using her hands often?

2) Watch for changes in facial expressions

Is the person interested at all in what you’re saying? (Hint: If she’s not, change the topic ASAP!)

3) Keep track of key areas the person refers back to often so that you can respond appropriately

If this person has a strong interest in skateboarding, for example, coming up with personal experiences and/or interest areas related to skateboarding will probably make the person happy.

Being really observant of how other people are responding to you and changing your behavior accordingly can really make a difference.

Practice, practice, practice!

An interview can take 10 minutes, an hour, or somewhere in between. Because you’re not establishing a long-term relationship with your interviewer (not yet, at least), mirroring your interviewer’s personality and also showcasing your strengths might mean the difference between an offer and a rejection.

A First-Hand Account of the Internship Search

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Now that the internship search is over, I finally have time to reflect on what I should have done better and what I should do in the future. If you’re thinking about applying for an internship grant in the future (or soon, because you can!), I hope you find this blog post helpful. I would have saved myself much time and energy if someone had told me these things.

1) Seek internship opportunities from your personal network.

I submitted my applications to organizations I had never heard of before and foolishly expected responses regarding the status of my application. This didn’t happen for most of the places I applied to. When I had less than two weeks to secure an internship (don’t put yourself in this kind of position, it’s really bad…), my amazing friend (and #1 fan of my blogs 😉 ) suggested that I reach out to a senior that we both knew through a 5C club who had done internships in areas I was also interested in. A casual, semi-desperate Facebook IM turned into me receiving two internship offers from organizations that our mutual friend had interned with. During the last two weeks, I also reached out to two people I had met at CP&R’s wonderful networking panel during Family Weekend. I found out that one of the parents I contacted was good friends with two members in Congress and would help me set up an internship. Though I didn’t end up taking his offer, he was tremendously helpful and offered to help me again next year if I wanted an internship.

2) Be very clear about your deadlines

This is actually really simple. Last week, I sent my interviewer a thank you email and included a few (very important) sentences about the internship grant deadline that was only three days away. She never responded to this email, but I was sure that she had read it. The night before the grant was due, I sent her a reminder email but changed the subject line to “Status of Internship Application” instead of “Thank You” as I had previously written. My interviewer responded the next morning apologizing for missing what I had written in the previous email and immediately offered me a position.

tl;dr: Subject lines in emails can make a huge difference! Something like “Action Requested: [………….]” would be effective.

3) Learn how to make a realistic budget

I will admit that I didn’t take this section of the internship grant as seriously as I could have. Now that I’m forced to think about travel, housing, transportation, and food, I’m realizing that certain areas (HOUSING) are significantly more expensive than other areas. If you’re currently writing a grant, make sure you know the cost of living of where you’re planning to intern. Fun fact: If you live in a home stay in Spain for the summer, you can actually save much more than if you intern in Washington, D.C.

4) Double and triple check all cover letters and resumes for minor errors!

5) Always express your gratitude and write hand-written thank you notes to anyone that went out of their way to help you!

6) Don’t wait until the last minute to do things! I literally got my two offers the day before and the day of the internship grant deadline. This was a extremely stressful.

7) Remember to do your research about your organization! Tips from an article I read recently: In a phone interview, print out everything you’re going to plan on looking at; i.e. your resume, the “About Us” section of the website, the job description, etc. so you’re not switching between screens. This helps!

I think this is longest post I’ve written this semester. I hope this information is useful to you in the future!

Good luck on finding an internship! 🙂

5 mistakes, continued

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1. Proofread your cover letters before you send them out.

A few hours before my phone interview, I realized that I had written the wrong organization name down on my cover letter. This sounds really simple and easy to avoid, but it’s actually really easy to miss when you’re copying sentences between cover letters.

2. Most employers will call you for a phone interview, not the other way around.

Most headers in resumes include your full name, address, phone number, and email. Mine was no different, except that I forgot that the person scheduling the interview with me had my phone number. At exactly 10 AM, I called my interviewer and the first thing she said was, “Oh, I was just about to call you.” I then remembered that my phone number was listed on my resume. This isn’t a big mistake, but it’s something to keep in mind. In articles I’ve read, people have said that it’s customary to ask if it’s more convenient for you to call or for your interviewer to call when you’re scheduling your interview.

3. Find out what the organization actually does.

This is also something that I’ve been told over and over again and yet failed to do. Fifteen minutes before my interview, I looked up the organization’s website just to skim through their About Us, Internship Programs, and current projects one last time. I realized that the organization was not at all what I had imagined it to be. (You can guess how tailored that cover letter was…) Luckily, I was (hopefully) able to sound like I had always known what the organization was about, but I don’t suggest waiting until the very last second to do your research.

#1 and #3 sound like they were pulled from a brochure on how to look for internships. I’ve definitely seen both those tips there before. And despite hearing those two things too many times to count, I still managed to make those two mistakes in the last two days. 

5 Mistakes I’ve Made in the Last 24 Hours and How You Can Avoid Doing the Same

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1. I sent emails to people at 3 AM because I needed their help with something. The next morning, I was asked to rewrite the email to make it “forwardable.” Whoops. To clarify, nothing I said in the email was shockingly terrible, but I could have written it in a more professional manner.

Lesson: Your judgment at 3 AM might not be the best.

2. I sent the wrong attachment in an email, which included redlined changes that had not been accepted on the “Track Changes” option for over a year. I don’t know how this happened, but I frantically sent three emails about me trying to fix the problem without actually fixing the problem.

Lesson: Make sure you verify that you are sending the correct attachments in documents, and try to solve the problem yourself without giving someone a play-by-play of everything you’re doing.

3. I misread an email and called someone a day early.

Lesson: Read carefully.

4. I sent a poorly worded email (see a trend here?) that said something along the lines of “I will do this if the company can make arrangements for me” and then spent the rest of the evening worrying about how unappreciative and arrogant I sounded. This morning, I sent another email clarifying what I had meant to say. I’m not sure if I should have done this or not.

Lesson: Being over polite is probably being polite enough.

5. Please reread 4.

Lesson: Something like “I would be so grateful if the company could help me with…” would have been much better.

Part 2

What I’ve learned in the last day is that asking for help isn’t the worst thing in the world. I thought I was too good to ask people for help because I could figure out everything on my own.

{T-W-E-L-V-E M-O-R-E D-A-Y-S}