As a student with almost no formal work experience before entering university, I have been able to find various ways to gain experience to be relevant when applying for internships. Here are some of the tips and resources I found useful (updated Feb 2024):
- Certifications: Sites like Coursera, Udemy, or LinkedIn Learning are useful to learn a lot of untaught professional skills, and showcasing these certificates of completion can help boost your profile and stand out to employers. Microsoft Azure gives out free codes to take their Fundamentals certifications if you are part of their student ambassador program, and AWS and Google have similar offerings.
- Personal Projects: Follow a basic YouTube tutorial or courses on these certification platforms if you don’t know where to start. Watch a tutorial and build a portfolio website and start from there.
- Paid Projects: Riipen (Canadians post-secondary students only), Federal Student Work Experience programs, or even freelance platforms like Fiverr or Upwork. Work on becoming proficient in these digital skills that these platforms are looking and build a brand around yourself.
- Teaching Assistant and Campus Positions: Experience as a TA is as valuable as an internship. Would highly recommend trying to TA for a class you did well in by building rapport with the instructor and current TA’s while taking the course. There are also all kinds of part time student jobs available through university career pages.
- Hackathons and Case Competitions: The MLH Website has virtual and in-person hackathons listed that happen almost every weekend. For case competitions, try and follow clubs that post related events, and the business undergrad society at school.
- Campus Events and Workshops: Follow companies and join their career groups for firms that you are interested in working at in the future, and look out for events that recruiters share. If you are interested in prepping for your resume / cover letter / interviews, plenty of events and workshops are available on school job boards as well.
- Clubs and Extra Curriculars: Try and get involved in your first couple years of school in different clubs that your university / undergraduate society has to offer, as these are a great way to get some experience for your resume if you don’t have any paid work experience from before. Go to club fairs, browse your undergrad society’s events page, ask what clubs your friends are in. These can also be non-academic related, like social clubs or even fraternities/sororities.
- Leverage Existing Network: No harm in asking people you know that already work in the industry, or ask to get connected to someone that does. Friends, classmates, or even family members can easily refer you.
- Unpaid Internships: In my experience these are pretty rare to see but they do exist on Indeed and school job boards. There are also great virtual internship experiences on The Forage.
Doing any of these even after landing a first job is still important to keep up with the latest technologies, and it gives candidates a chance to showcase their skills and hobbies. Job search is always a stressful and tedious process, especially when first starting out at the internship or the new graduate level (currently struggling with this). I still feel the burden of going through these cycles almost every semester, but I hope the tips and resources provided above help make this process a bit more fun!
