When we started talking about Internships in class, my teacher mode immediately turned on. I somehow managed to get my internship out of the way during the Spring 2020 semester (which wasn’t the best way because I had to shortcut my internship halfway because of the panoramic) and I wanted to share my tricks and tips on how to get an internship (especially a virtual one) during these times. I managed to have a 4-month social media/communications internship with the lovely organization I call home. Urban Word NYC is the leading literary arts organization in New York City. They champion the NYC Youth poet Laureate Program, the Annual NYC Poetry Slam held at the Apollo, and many more iconic events. My main goal with the internship was to get a part-time job (which they couldn’t provide because of the pandemic) but I was able to obtain some really good connects in various fields of the Industry.

Now the question is, What is your process? One of the things that I learned at urban Word NYC is the importance of networking. We all know that Linkedin is “The Facebook for adults” and the powerhouse of networking. I have a process I love to call “Networking Stalking’ which really helped me through the process of finding jobs and more specifically interviews for internships for the Summer and Fall of 2020 (not for school but for experience). Firstly, you have to look up the company that you want to work for. Find their list of employees in the department that you want to work for. Linkedin’s technology allows individuals and companies to sync up which make them easier to find. Once you find someone who looks interesting, you connect with them, and look at the companies they used to work for, and connect with people att thier old job. This puts you higher on their list, causing more and more people to connect with you. You can do with with several people.Once you do this long enough, you have a spider web of connections in different places of people doing the same job that you want to do. You are able to keep tabs/updates, find mutual people and become a familair face whenever you’re ready to ask for an interview or sending a message just to introduce yourself. As you know you probably won’t talk to the 300 people you connected with over time, but you would have a better understanding of tthe places tthat you can get into.

While there are many ways to get into the field, this is the way that I found most successful. I appreciated my method so much, that I went back on Linkedin and found a company that is the father of a big company that I want to work for. I want to be able to use the techniques I learned in this class to get an interview with someone in the company hopefully looking to hire by next year! I’ll let you know how it goes.

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