Hello all, I hope you’re all getting ready to take a few days off for the Thanksgiving holiday and do some serious damage to your diets by overeating all weekend long I’m always a big fan of Thanksgiving because it is a chance for all of us to gather with our families, friends, and loved ones to reflect on life and the things for which we should all be thankful. It may seem like there’s nothing to be thankful for with the current global economic crisis, but the fact that we’re living and breathing is always a reason to celebrate. Think about that during your Thanksgiving celebrations tomorrow.

The email below is from a college Junior who is requesting advice on finding a good summer internship without having a wealth of previous experience on his resume. I was in a similar situation when I was in college, but my academic performance was nowhere near as good as this kid’s. Normally, I’d consider the advice I gave in my response to be solid, but the down market is a wild card that complicates everything in the job market. I’ve got my fingers crossed for this reader and everyone else out there trying to find a job right now.

Before I go, I thought I should give you guys an update on me. After a little more than two years, my time at McKinsey & Company will conclude after the Thanksgiving holiday. I learned a tremendous amount during my time with the Firm and found it to be a fantastic “finishing school” following my GSB graduation. I’ll be moving on to a new opportunity that should provide an even greater learning experience, but will require me to relocate to Chicago. So, I’ll literally be starting over from scratch with a new gig in a new city and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Also, please don’t ask for details about the new job because I’ve learned over the years that I need to start keeping certain things “close to the vest”. OK, now let’s get to what y’all are most interested in…this latest entry

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DS wrote:

“Dear Marquis,

First off I’d like to thank you for making your experience available to the readers of your blog. I stumbled across it googling internships and it seemed to have some really good advice. I’m starting to think about internships for summer 09, which would be between my sophomore and junior years. I’m an economics major at Yale, and I have a decent GPA so far, 3.64. My problem is that my only work experience so far is limited to caddying at the local country club, and my past summer was spent studying in Italy, so I feel like my resume looks very empty. Because I’m on a varsity sports team, I don’t have a whole lot of time for many business or finance related extracurriculars; I’m active in the student investment group a bit, but that’s about it.

To reiterate, my question is, how would someone like me with solid credentials but little experience go about trying to secure a quality internship the next summer?

Thanks, again I really appreciate you taking the time to help people like this.

-DS”
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My response:

DS,

I hope you’re doing well. I know it’s been a while since you sent in your email, so I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. Thankfully, you were asking about the summer internship recruiting process, so my response is coming at just about the right time…at least I hope so. I’m actually glad for this delay in responding because the answer I give now will likely be different than the one I would have given a couple of months ago. Also, you’re fortunate to be a junior seeking an internship instead of a senior looking for a full-time gig because the economy is making the game difficult for the Class of 2009. Anyways, let me get to your question…

So, your question was about how you might go about securing a good internship for next summer with little work experience. I faced this issue a couple of times in college and wish I’d had the thought to ask someone like the “current-me” about it back then. This is never an easy hurdle to clear (especially during this down economy), but

1. Building your candidacy:
a. Make yourself look like a rock star candidate –> When I read your message, it seemed like you were focusing more on what you were lacking than what you actually bring to the table. You might not have a lot of work experience, but I’m sure that there are many qualities that would make you great candidate for an internship. You’ve just got to help potential employers recognize your strengths so they’ll look past your lack of previous experience. So, now you should stop worrying about what you DON’T have and figure out the best way to present what you DO have. The best place to get your “rock star” game going is in your resume and I recommend that you reformat it to emphasize the strengths in your profile. Your resume may currently have significant whitespace because of your lack of work experience, but you can make some value-added tweaks to fill in those empty areas. First, you might want to add in a “Summary” section to describe your strengths, professional interests, and other qualities that would make you a fit for the position. Then, instead of having separate “Work Experience” and “Extracurricular” activity sections, you could combine them into a single “Experience section, where you would add some meat to your varsity athletics and study abroad experiences to point out traits that could translate well into a professional environment. You could also add some content about any independent study that you’ve done at Yale to provide additional background about yourself. Finally, you could close it out with an “Additional Information” section where you throw in any other anecdotes about yourself that could be interesting. And, hopefully, this reformatted resume would showcase your positives instead of revealing the gaps in your profile.

b. Make companies want you –> When you think your profile may have some weaknesses, it is your responsibility to make potential employers want to give you a good long look (and hopefully, a second, third, and fourth look too). Part of this will be taken care of by making your resume pop, but a strong cover letter would offer a great one-two punch when applying for internships. In your cover letter, you’ll want to highlight the strong points of your background/profile that would make you a can’t-miss candidate for the internship. Also, you’ll want to show that you’ve done a lot of research into the company and role and see it as a great learning experience and fit at this point in your early career. Some might consider this to be overkill, but, if you want a good internship, it certainly can’t hurt you to go on overkill status with it all. Also, I’d recommend combining the resume and cover letter into a single Word document to reduce the number of files you’d have to maintain and send off to recruiters. After putting together this resume/letter package, you should be leaving recruiters with no choice than to contact you to find out more and give you a shot.

2. Sourcing job opportunities:
a. Be strategic and flexible about the internships that you pursue –> I know many people who have taken internships that seem cool at the time, but then regret the decision later when they don’t get much “bang for the buck” with it on their resumes. Don’t let this happen to you. When thinking about where to apply, take a longer-term view, thinking about not only this current internship but also the type of full-time job you’d want out of college and the career path you’d like to pursue in your first couple of years. As I’ve mentioned in a past entry, there can be several paths to get to an end-goal, so thinking ahead to your full-time recruiting could reveal interesting internship avenues that you have yet to consider. Also, because the job market is so tight, please don’t be devastated if you don’t get the internship that you want most for this summer. If you’ve been thoughtful about the options you’ve considered, you should be able to leverage whatever you end up with to maximize your full-time job options for next year. Just remember that the main goal here is to get an enriching summer experience that will make your resume “pop”, not necessarily to get the “sexiest” internship possible.

b. Use as many avenues as possible to find good internship options –> In addition to leveraging your school’s career service office, try other alternatives for finding opportunities, including your school’s alumni community, networking with friends/family/contacts, cold-calling companies that interest you, using online job boards, etc. This last one could be especially good because I know many folks who have found fantastic summer gigs (including ones at top companies like Google) using online resources over the past few years. Given the present economic environment, candidates might have to think outside the box to find good internships, but, if they do so, I’m sure that one can strike gold with a great one.

I hope these tips are coming to you early enough to be useful as you think through your approach to the upcoming summer recruiting cycle. Take care and good luck with your summer internship search. I know it might seem scary with the current economy, but you’ll pick up something good if you put your mind to it and get your grind on.

-Marquis