Just the other day I found myself in a rather sticky situation: I discovered I had made it past the first round of application cuts for an internship at a world-renowned music company, and could not continue on in the application process. I had applied for the internship back in early November and filed it away in my brain as a Definite Long Shot opportunity. The application was online and rather generic, as the company is huge — in fact, one of the questions on the form was to select which cities you were interested in, with a total of six cities listed. The choices ranged from Atlanta to Miami to L.A. and New York. It was made clear when I submitted my application that only applicants who passed the first round of cuts would be contacted by phone after an unspecified amount of time. With that in mind, I researched other internships and applied to two other programs, one of which really excited me.

After two months of not hearing a peep from the music company, I accepted an internship opportunity in San Francisco with a small start-up that had shown interest in me right away and wasn’t afraid to get the ball rolling. I was pleased, and told myself that the music company gets applicants from all over the world. I was sure that they had plenty of applicants, all of whom were probably older than me, all of whom had experience in the world of music and business. I figured that I’d been cut from their pool of applicants within the first round, and that’s why I hadn’t heard from them. With a promise to myself that I would apply again for the following summer, I faced my future in San Francisco with excitement and joy.

Well, as it turns out, I underestimated myself. To my surprise, I received a call from a woman in Human Resources at the company who was interested in talking with me about moving onto the next step in the application process. She’d left a message, and I was left staring at my phone, panic rising up in my throat. First of all, I couldn’t believe that I’d passed the first round. Second of all, I just couldn’t believe it, period. Had I jumped the gun in acquiring another internship so early? What if I’d made the wrong decision?

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Who knows what you’ll find when you surf the Internet? For me, some relaxed surfing for internships online led me to a fantastic summer internship opportunity.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I found a promising internship posting on internships.com for a start-up company in San Francisco called Livefyre. I’d been shifting through internship postings by city, focusing in on San Francisco simply because I have a lot of family there, have lived in the area before, and absolutely love it. I was hunting for a summer internship way, way in advance — in November, in fact. I was planning on seeing what was available, how the general job and internship market was looking, and maybe bookmark some promising finds. I wasn’t planning on actually applying for an internship in November — at the very least, I might request more information. Little did I know…

The Livefyre internship posting caught my eye for several reasons. First and foremost, they provided a wealth of information about the company. On sites like internships.com, you should always look for postings with crucial information on the company: its name, company location, the internship location, whether or not it is paid/unpaid, whether it is virtual or not, etc. Livefyre provided all of these. In addition to the information they provided, the writing of the internship posting was superb. I know that many people wouldn’t expect a job posting to have improper grammar or poor spelling, but I’ve been unpleasantly surprised by how poorly some posts are written. Make sure the ad has proper grammar and spelling — if not, back away slowly.

Above all, what excited me about the Livefyre internship posting was the tone of it. It was clear that it was written with genuine love for the company, its product, and the start-up way of life in San Francisco. The listing offered interviews with other companies who had used the Livefyre commenting system, reviews of the product by well-known online blogs, and more to flesh out the company, its people, and the product they provide. Instead of merely reading a template internship posting, I felt like someone was talking to me through my laptop’s screen, and that made all the difference.

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As students in a world of technology, we all know that the Internet is a wonderful tool. We’ve all used it, whether it’s in the form of social media (ah, Facebook), to research, or just plain having fun. For a long time, I viewed the Internet as a pathway toward meeting new people who shared interests with me and a place from which I could glean plenty of information about the world. Once I hit college, however, I realized just how much the Internet could help me in researching for and obtaining internships and jobs.

I found my first internship online at internjobs.com. Really, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time — I basically Googled internships and found that site. However, it turned out to be quite the good choice. I searched by location for internships, selected the city I was living in at the time, and was pleased to find a list of internships that fit my criteria. There was also an option for virtual internships, which I hadn’t thought about pursuing. On a whim, I looked for a virtual internship in my city, and found a listing for a social media and networking internship with Savvy Cinderella. My experience was absolutely priceless. I interned at Savvy Cinderella for a total of 6 months, both during the school year and over the summer — all of that with two quick searches online. Try searching internjobs.com for an internship near you, and see what comes up.

My second internship was also found online, at internships.com. I was hunting for summer internships in November (overkill, I know…), searching, once again, by location. I’d decided that, while I loved the freedom and creativity offered by a virtual internship, I really wanted to work in an office and gain some work experience along the way. I’ve lived in the Bay Area for a large portion of my life, and a lot of my family is still in that area, so I focused my search in on San Francisco. Internships.com is unique, as it not only lists jobs and internships for companies, but also provides services for students. You can create an account with them, fill out your pertinent information (schooling, fields of interest, awards, work experience, etc.), as well as upload your resume, specify what job or internship you’re specifically looking for, save past job/internship searches, and more. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical of the service — in my experience, it’s always best to research the company, find out how they want you to contact them instead of letting a service do it for you — but I went ahead and filled it out. In the end, I whittled the list of possible internships down to two. One company only allowed you to apply through the service (hint: alarm bells should go off if you see that!), and the other had a beautiful website, with plenty of information about joining the team.

Well, as you can guess, I applied to both. I never, ever heard a peep from the company that only allowed me to apply through the site. Interestingly enough, internships.com doesn’t inform you if they’ve sent off your application, whether the company has received it, or if they’ve even visited their own job listing page recently. I was completely in the dark, and it was not a pleasant feeling. It’s not a good position to be in, either — this is your future they’re handling, here! I re-doubled my research on the company, which was a small branch of a well-known publishing company. While the internship posting had named who would be in charge of the project, I found nothing else online for that branch. No website, no contact information. The only bit of information I found was the name of the branch listed on a side-page of the parent publishing company. Clearly, it wasn’t a viable listing, and I could have saved myself the effort of filling out internship.com‘s hefty information fields!

What happened with the other internship application? Well, the story has a happy ending. After researching the company’s website, team, goals, and previous work, I bit the bullet and sent off a cover letter and resume to the contact email. To my complete surprise, the CEO of the company got back to me by that night. After a rather nerve-racking interview process (which included my first-ever Skype interview — look for a post about that coming shortly), I landed the internship. Once again, an internship site treated me welln

I’m sure nearly everyone has looked for jobs or internships online — the trick is knowing where to look. If you’re interested in working at a startup company, check out startuply.com as well as ventureloop.com. Indeed.com is also incredibly handy, and I’ve recently started following Urban Interns, which is in its beta phase, and it looks promising. Wherever you end up hunting for your next job or internship, just make sure to look for promising, verifiable listings and companies. Research the company elsewhere — do they have a respectable online presence? Do they have job listings on their own site? Are they clear about who to contact? Doing so can save you time and heartache during your search.

Happy hunting!