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.