How to Find Startup Internships

Knowing how to find startup internships is key to your career advancement. One of the easiest and most accessible ways of gaining professional experience and exposure to an industry is through internships. Internships are great for building your resume and preparing you for your actual employment. 

While most corporate internships are specific to a particular role, startup internships offer a broader exposure beyond roles. For most startups, hiring talents is capital intensive and the best way to cut costs is to hire interns. As such, most startup internships don't restrict their interns to their specific roles. Rather, they allow interns to learn and operate based on the departments that help a startup operate smoothly. Ultimately, an intern gets to learn more and build a robust resume just by interning in a startup. InternPreneur makes it a lot easier for applicants to search for startup internship opportunities on their website.

What is a Startup Internship?

A startup is usually classified as any company or organization that began operation within the past three years. Seeing as startups are not large scale enterprises, they can thrive on a limited number of employees. The employees of startups usually fill essential roles and are closely knitted to allow multitasking and a unified effort in actualizing goals. 

Internships in startups are primarily short-term roles which are oftentimes filled by undergraduates, fresh graduates and persons who're relatively new to a particular industry or the labor market. Seeing as most startups have a closely knitted environment, interns oftentimes are prone to multitasking and handling a wide variety of tasks that cut across different roles and departments. Ultimately, startup internships build prospective interns with essential skills and professional experience that'll come in handy in a full-time employment. Internship in startups also helps with deciding what field to specialize in, having learned a thing or two across multiple roles. Feel free to browse through the thousands of startup internship openings on InternPreneur.

4 Easy Steps on How to Find Startup Internships

Finding a startup internship has a lot to do with your interest, research and preparation. Here are four steps to take in securing a startup internship:

Define Your Role and Startup Type; oftentimes prospective interns are faced with the dilemma of choosing what internship role would be fitting for them. You can resolve this by weighing your career preference with the available startup internships. 

Rather than just applying for literally any role, you'd have a greater success rate if you first streamline your search to your preferred career role and industry. Apply only to startups and roles within your preferred career industry. Here's the catch; InternPreneur has a constantly updated pool of internship roles which you can explore until you decide to specialize in a career role.

Search for the Ideal Startup; just as employers search for the ideal candidate, you as an intern can also search for the ideal startup suitable for you. When searching for the ideal startup, always scrutinize your choices based on the potential for career growth. 

Certain startups will easily allow you to hone your skill and grow in your career, whereas there are some startups that are potential death traps for your career plans. Factors such as work ethics, organization's policies, and fringe benefits must determine the ideal startup to intern with. To make your search easier, you can sign up with InternPreneur and get access to regular updates on startup internship opportunities near you.

Optimize Your CV/Resume; although it may sound cliche, the saying "dress for the job you want" is pretty accurate when preparing your resume. You need to tailor your resume with precision to the industry and internship role you want to apply for. Most times, companies hire based on specific skills and work experience, hence you need to put your "best foot forward". 

As a prospective intern, you may not have lots of professional experience, but that's where your volunteer and student community experiences come in. Always start with your most specific skills before inserting more generic skills.

Apply and Move On; this may sound like harsh advice, but it's the best way to avoid getting depressed over rejection emails. Even as prospective interns, you're not totally immune from having your internship application rejected. It's the "harsh reality" of the corporate world.

Internship applications are often rejected due to your skills not aligning with the startup's requirement. Your cover letter and resume might not be optimized for your preferred internship role, hence rejection. To gauge the depressive effect of rejection, you just have to optimize your resume per time, apply, keep your fingers crossed and move on to the next application. While you'll definitely be hired in the end, it's important not to quit applying before your big break. The good news is that there’s more than enough internship opportunities to apply for on InternPreneur - apply away.

InternPreneur: Your Best Bet to Getting Hired

As a student or fresh graduate looking for a startup internship, InternPreneur is the right platform for you. InternPreneur is a fast rising platform for professional networking. It's designed as the bridge between rising talents and hiring startups.

With over 50,000 testimonies from both interns and employers alike, InternPreneur is actively building the network that'll connect every student seeking an internship with the right startup. All you need to do is to create a profile with InternPreneur, and actively apply from the plethora of internship openings on the platform.

Conclusion

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Over the coming years, a new generation of innovative and cutting-edge startups are expected to be at the forefront of the next technological revolution. As such, many of these companies will need fresh new talent to fill out the ranks at the entry level. You could be that person. So how can you find startup internships? Well, there are plenty of options out there—but one place you may want to start would be an entrepreneur community near you.