Recruiting season. Pretty scary, right? Virtually everyone would agree that recruiting for jobs and internships is a very busy time. All at once you’re bombarded with Trojan talks, virtual information sessions, coffee chats, coding assessments, and interviews. In most cases, there is much more to getting an internship than submitting your resume and application.
I recently signed for an operations engineering summer intern position at Medtronic. There is no formula to getting an internship, but these are some of the things I did and helpful resources I used.
- Visited the viterbi career counselors (https://viterbicareers.usc.edu/students/advising/) and used VMock to improve my resume. USC gives students free access to so many different resources that I’ve found incredibly useful.
- Updated my LinkedIn profile. I added relevant skills, classes, awards, and experiences along with descriptions. Additionally, I made sure to add everyone I met at events or information sessions.
- Reached out to people in my network (LinkedIn and student orgs) who held roles I was interested in. I learned more about what they did and how they received the opportunity.
- Attended professional events for clubs I was a part of. I actually met Medtronic and the recruiter through a Women in Engineering event. Smaller numbers of students means more one on one time which is very important to me.
- Went through a first round screening interview with a USC recruiter for the company. The questions followed the STAR method and were not technical.
- Waited a month and sent location and job preferences to Medtronic.
- Placed with two second round hiring managers and set-up interviews.
- Had multiple, longer back-to-back interviews with hiring managers I would be working under.
- Heard back the next week, signed, and boom!
Again, there is no certain path to getting an internship. Every person and experience is different, but I hope mine might shed some light on what a path may look like.
Fight On!
