In the week since I filmed my last video on internships and Coronavirus,
even more has progressed. As we all knew it would. As companies continue to
evaluate what their next steps are going to be, as a result of COVID-19, some are
pushing decisions out, and postponing and deferring their internships. Some are
shifting them to online, remote internships. And others have made the
tough call to cancel their upcoming internship program altogether. In the
coming weeks (and months) we will learn even more. But in the meantime, what can
you be doing as a student if your internship has been canceled? That's
what I'm going to cover in this video. Because you do have options. You can be
productive with this time. And you can still take control of your future,
without an internship. And if this is the future, and you've stumbled upon this
video after the Coronavirus outbreak has slowed down, and life has gone back
to normal. I still encourage you to stick around and watch this video. Because I'm
sharing 5 internship alternatives that will be helpful to you as you work
on your professional development as a student. Virus outbreak or not. First and
foremost, before I go over the 5 different ways that you can come out of
this situation with new skills, professional relationships and an
enhanced resume. Let's talk about how you should handle the news that your
internship has been canceled. There is a wrong way to handle this, and there is a
right way. The wrong way is holding on to frustration or anger toward a company,
and failing to communicate with them. And representing yourself in a negative way
by leaving comments on Twitter about how you feel about this entire situation. A
lot of students are doing this and in some cases they're mentioning the
company's names in their tweets. I've seen it. Don't do this. Don't burn bridges.
You worked hard to get this internship, and you have no idea what could still
come out of all that hard work. And remember, we are all in this together. The
company did not want to cancel the internship program any more than you did.
Instead of burning bridges and being negative online, and all of those things.
The right way to handle your internship getting cancelled is let yourself feel
frustrated, and angry, and sad...for a moment...by yourself. Then vent a little
bit to your family and close friends. But don't go on Twitter. Don't take this to
the internet. You're human and you're allowed to feel this way about something
that you were looking forward to, and the fact that it got canceled and what a
shock all of that is to you. But after you let yourself feel those emotions, pull
yourself together and send the company an email. Or get on the phone with them.
And maintain the relationship. Hear me again...maintain the relationship. Do this
before too much time has passed. This is a professional relationship that you
worked hard to build, and get up to this point with. Don't lose it. You want to be
the intern that reacts in a mature way, and leaves a positive mark. You want to
be the intern that they call first when everything goes back to normal. So reach
out to them, and stay in touch with them. Maintain a positive relationship. Now
that you're prepared to snap out of it, and handle yourself like a professional,
give this video a like if you're eager to learn more about what I have to share
with you today. The options and the internship alternatives that you have to
still gain experience and skills, even if your internship has been canceled.
Here we go! Option number one for students who have had their upcoming
internship canceled: Short-term paid professional projects. Say that again
five times fast. These are projects from real companies. Tasks that are important
to the company, but perhaps not the best use of their time. Or maybe under current
circumstances, the people that used to perform these tasks have been
reallocated to other urgent needs and they need someone new to come in and
step in to complete these tasks. These projects are short-term, usually 20 to 40
hours of work in total. And they're offered across many different
departments and areas of a business. And they're actual professional assignments.
Like data analysis, market research, technology best practices, copywriting,
financial modeling, budget reconciliation, content creation and more. And they are
paid. So how can you secure these short-term paid projects? Well you can go
about this in a couple ways. First, you can approach the company that you were
meant to intern for and see if they have any project-based assignments that you
can perform for them. You've already done your research on the company (because
this is something that you would have done during the interview process), and
you've gotten to know them a little bit as time has gone on. So come up with some
ideas of how you can be of assistance to them, and
pitch those as projects. While also asking them if they have any projects in
mind. When you reach out, make sure that you lead with value and that you
demonstrate how you can be an asset to them during this time. Put yourself in
their shoes for a second, and try to think about what challenges they are
currently experiencing. Then work from a place that helps them solve those
challenges. While other interns in your position may be sulking and continuing
to use this canceled internship as an excuse for why they aren't advancing
professionally, you are seizing this opportunity to present yourself in a
positive light to the company and you're being an asset to them while still
developing your own skills in the process. So what if your company isn't
open to short-term projects and they have nothing to offer you?
Well the second way that you can find these short-term paid projects are
online. You can do a Google search on your own, or you can go through a company
that helps connect students to employers for exactly this type of work. One of
these companies, I recently discovered from a post on LinkedIn.
Parker Dewey -- and I will link to them in the description below -- they connect
students with employers for short-term paid assignments. Parker Dewey calls
these opportunities micro-internships And they work with a variety of
industries, as well as partnering with universities, to help place students with
opportunities that are a good professional fit. This allows you, as the
student, to explore a variety of roles and company cultures. No matter how you
secure a short-term project, the beauty of them is that they give the company an
additional, flexible resource (especially during this time), and they give you an
opportunity to develop new skills and learn more about various tasks and
departments firsthand. These projects allow you to evaluate your likes and
your dislikes. And your fit for future opportunities that you may, or may not,
want to apply for. Keep in mind that you need to treat these opportunities like
interviews. If you have any hopes to get another short-term project, or a longer
term offer from this company -- either a future internship or a full time
position -- then you need to treat these projects as interviews. You need to
perform the tasks well and demonstrate your time management skills by
completing them in the time allotted. You also need to be a good communicator. This
means timely with your emails, open to feedback and proactive about
any roadblocks that you see arising throughout the project. I can guarantee
that you will be evaluated on all of these things. Option number two for
students that have had their upcoming internship canceled: Remote internships.
Yes, maybe your internship was canceled and your employer is not offering a
remote internship at this time. But that doesn't exclude you from looking for
other remote internship opportunities. Just like in-person internships, these
remote opportunities can be paid or unpaid.
So assess them just like you would a normal internship search in respect to
your own financial needs and situation. And check out my video on unpaid
internships if you're looking for some guidance on how to approach that. But
even before Coronavirus struck, there have been an increasing number of remote
internship opportunities surfacing. And you are part of this generation that's
best equipped to take them on. You're savvy when it comes to technology and
the tools required to do the job. So to find these remote internships, you can
perform a simple Google search and just see what's available. But I also
encourage you to check in with your campus Career Center, as they may be
aware of employers that are looking for students specifically from your school.
And if your school uses Handshake, or another similar job and internship
platform, be sure that you're logging in frequently and following companies that
you're interested in so that you're notified as soon as opportunities are
posted. Over 500,000 employers are on handshake, and posting internships and
jobs targeting students, and I can bet that quite a bit more of them are
posting internships right now that are remote. And don't forget about LinkedIn.
There are so many opportunities on LinkedIn as well, and if you even just
search #internships, #remoteinternships on LinkedIn, you'll
see the most recent conversations and opportunities coming up in your
LinkedIn feed. If you do secure a remote internship, and take your work online,
there are a few things that you should implement to ensure that your remote
experience is a productive and successful one. First, same as the
short-term project-based work, communication is key. Be a good
communicator. Speak up when things don't make sense, or when you need help. Track
and share your progress with your manager, on a consistent basis. And stay
on top of your emails. And when it comes to email, don't over-communicate
either. Get in a good practice of compiling questions for your manager and
sending them a single email, versus sending 10 on-the-fly emails over the
course of the day. They will love you for being considerate of their time. Second,
set goals for yourself at the onset of your internship. I recommend having this
conversation with your manager and incorporating their objectives, but you
should also have some personal goals set for yourself. For more on this, and to get
some ideas for goals that you can set, check out this video that I have on
internship goals. With any internship I think that it's an important first step to
set goals, but with a remote internship it's even more important to have goals
in place that keep you on track and allow you to check in on your progress,
and recalibrate if necessary throughout the experience. And the third thing that
I want you to implement with remote internships, is scheduling touch bases or
short virtual coffee breaks with other people in the office. These don't need to
be any more than 15 minutes long, but they are a good way for you to connect
with more than just your manager or fellow interns. One of the most important
things to develop in an internship is a network. And you do that by building
relationships with people. This isn't so easy to do in a remote work environment.
So make it a goal of yours to reach out and connect with a few new people each
week, and introduce yourself and start building relationships. You can treat
these like you would an informational interview. Come prepared to your
15-minute meetings (that are virtual), with your cup of coffee and any questions
that you have for them about their role, their career path and more. And be
prepared to listen to their stories and take notes. Build relationships. Option
number three for students who have had their upcoming internship canceled: Case-based
learning. This is not a paid opportunity, but this is an opportunity
for you to learn important business concepts as you work through real-world
business challenges. Instead of just sitting around doing nothing, you're
developing your brain to come up with solutions. I am all about that growth
mindset. There are a couple ways that you can go about finding these case-based
learning opportunities. And one, I've personally done. Another, I just recently
learned about. Let's start with the one that I have experience with from my past.
So during my second job out of college, I expressed to my CEO that I
wanted to learn financial modeling. That was a skill that I wanted to develop. She
was a former investment banker, and a Harvard Business School grad, and I knew
that she could help teach me this skill. That said, she was also a busy CEO so
it's not like she could sit down and walk me through all of this. Instead, she
gave me case studies to complete, and then we would review these case studies
together. Now, being a graduate of Harvard Business School, she would give me HBS
case studies. Actual case studies that students at the Business School would do
in class. And I'm not sure if you know this about Harvard (I didn't at the time),
but they teach their courses using the case method. As opposed to a lecture
where a professor stands at the front of the classroom and instructs on a topic, a
case method class uses a real-world business case, presented by the
instructor, and calls for the students to process, problem-solve and work through
the case in a collaborative setting. If you're interested in tackling some of
the real-world challenges that business leaders have faced, and developing your
own business acumen, you can sample and purchase Harvard Business School case
studies to work through from the comfort of your own home. Just visit the Harvard
Business Review store website -- I will include the link in the description
below so that you can visit their site after this video -- and look for yourself.
But you can select cases by category so... entrepreneurship, finance and accounting,
operations, technology, marketing and more. And then you can browse and read through
the descriptions of these cases until you find one that interests you. The
downloadable PDFs can be purchased for anywhere between usually five and ten
dollars. And many of the cases will be on companies that you recognize, as well. For
example, I did one on the online textbook company, Chegg, that I'm sure you're all
familiar with. The case studies can be pretty challenging, but they are
interesting, and they can give you a glimpse into a real company and the
decisions that they have had to make in the past in order to grow, pivot and
manage. The other way that you can learn through company experience, is through a
San Francisco-based company I recently discovered called InsideSherpa. They
offer free, virtual work experience programs that you can complete. And they
describe these as simulation of the work done at leading companies. Again, these
programs are free to students, and they're are about five to six hours of
self-paced content. When you sign up you can get tasks and instructions from a
professional at a real business, that simulate the work that you
would actually do at their company. You then work through the task, and you're
presented with a correct work model at the end of the program in order to
compare your work to. It seems to be a pretty cool way to learn and experience
tasks firsthand, from a real world professional environment. And I will link
to the InsideSherpa website below if that's something that you're interested
in checking out. Option number four for students who have had upcoming
internships canceled: Start a blog or a research project. This option is also a
self-guided, unpaid experience, but it offers a lot of value in other ways. I
think it's fairly obvious that you can learn a lot about a subject by doing a
research project on it. But you can also learn a ton by writing about a subject.
That's why I've also included start a blog as an option here. Or just freelance
write on a specific subject -- that actually could become a paid opportunity
for you, if you're good at it. But the more that you niche down on a
subject that interests you, and write about it (or conduct research on it), the
more you're going to understand it. And the more educated you will be when
discussing this topic with others. Think about how this could help you out in
future internship or job interviews. Or even when you're networking with other
professionals. It makes you more of a thought leader. If you're interested in
starting a blog there are a number of free courses that you can sign up for, or
even YouTube videos that you can watch, that will walk you through the steps. But
it's a great way to utilize your time. Not only are you going deep on a subject,
but you are going to be learning how to set up a website in the process as well. It's
not a bad set of skills to have. And if you do start blogging, or writing on a
subject, you could see if that subject is relevant to something that your
university wants to publish and start blogging for your university. Or you
could apply that to perhaps the company that you had intended to intern for
before everything got canceled. Look for ways that you can apply what you're
doing to other opportunities that are just going to help enhance your resume.
Option number five for students who have had their upcoming internship canceled:
Invest in yourself, by preparing for your future.
This final option is a bit more broad, and I touched on it briefly in my last
video as well. But it's important enough to dive into again here. Look at this
time that has been gifted back to you, as an opportunity to really refine your
materials, and build up your self-awareness, and
feel confident in pitching yourself and your personal brand going forward. The
previous options I shared with you are all about investing in yourself as well,
but what I'm talking about here is really packaging your personal brand in
a marketable way. That starts with your resume and your LinkedIn profile. Use
this time to get both of them in good shape. Then work on your personal pitch,
and practice your storytelling. Which is an important skill for networking and
interviewing. And then start researching future opportunities, and create an
internship tracker for yourself. And I've done some of the work for you already. I
have a free internship tracker that you can download, and I will link it in the
description below this video. Once you track the internship
opportunities that you are interested in, then start applying to those
opportunities. Now is the time... while other people are sitting on the
sidelines and waiting to see what happens next.
Then practice some mock interviews with family and friends (maybe ones that
you're quarantined with), so that you are prepared and confident when you land
interviews in the future. Use this time in our history, with an economic downturn
lurking, as an example for why you should be proactively investing in yourself and
always prepared to take control of your future. Will it be harder to get an
internship or a job right now? In most cases, yes. But will it be harder to get
an internship or job if you don't apply or put in any effort? Absolutely, yes. Get
in front of the line. Do your research and create your internship tracker now,
so that you have your materials submitted, and you're surfacing to the top of the
hiring pipeline when life and work go back to normal.
Don't forget to grab your copy of the internship tracker, that I created for
you, at the link in the description below this video. And as I mentioned in the
last video, if you don't end up getting an internship right now -- whether it be an
in-person opportunity or a remote one -- and you want to use this time to really
set yourself up to land one in the near future. Then my online program for
students called, The Course, will be available to you soon. You can sign up
for updates and release date at theinternhustle.com/course. And in
the course I help you take control of your future with over 20 video lessons
and a step-by-step action plan to help you navigate internships and launch. It
comes with worksheets that really guide you through the whole process. Again, sign
up for updates at theinternhustle.com/course, and I will be sure to link
it in the description below as well. Thanks for watching. Let me know in the
comments below -- What internship alternative from this video you are most
excited to check out. And if this video gave you some new insights today, please
give it a like and share it with a friend or two. I'm sure you also have
many friends that are looking for internship alternatives at this time. So
be a pal and share it with them. And as a reminder, I put out new videos on this
channel every Monday to help you take control of your future, one internship
at a time. So hit that red subscribe button below and don't miss out on those
future videos. In support of your hustle, I'm Jenna from theinternhustle.com,
and I'll see you again on Monday.