5 reasons why you still haven’t got an internship.
Spoiler alert – bitter medicine and hard hitting advice to follow. Not recommended for weak-hearted or megalomaniacs.
For far too long you have blamed the college, the companies, the government, the society, the fate, and the neighbour’s dog as reasons for you still not finding an internship; may be it’s time for a little introspection and see if you yourself have some blame to share.
In our experience, following are the 5 most common reasons why students do not get an internship. And no, lack of enough opportunities is not one of them.
1. You woke up too late: – March/April is way too late for you to realise that you need to have a summer internship on your resume and to start looking for one fanatically. While you may still get one through contacts and family references but chances are it would be far from ideal. Remember Early bird Gets the worm?
2. You are not serious: – You don’t even know why you want to do an internship. May be it’s because you think it’s an in thing to do, may be because everyone else is doing it and you do not want to be left behind, or may be because your college demands it. But you yourself do not really understand the real value or purpose of an internship. If you did, what explains the same copy paste cover letter you write for every internship application with little original thoughts of your own?
3. You can not write an email: – Despite India claiming to be home of one of the largest English speaking population, sad truth is that most of our college students can not write two complete sentences in English without SMS language, spelling mistakes and poor grammar in it. Just surf around this website and look at the quality of English in the comments sections of different articles and you would understand why most of the internship applications are rejected at first glance.
4. Your resume sucks: –You may be a super hero in real life but an employer has only your resume in front of him. And it is sloppily written (at times you even forget to change the name of the person you copied it from), with no effort from your side to present your credentials in an effective manner. The margins are all over the place, the font size, type and colors are inconsistent, and at times it reads more like a marriage bio data than a professional resume – you get the picture.
5. You have no real skill or genuine will to offer: –If none of the above is true in your case and you are still struggling to find an internship, then either you are plain unlucky (hard to believe that) or possess no real skills that an employer may feel excited about. Let’s acknowledge, most of us grow up without any real passion and are studying what we are studying more by chance than by choice.
You have had an average academic record and have never made an effort to excel in any one area of your liking (never learned something on your own, never built a project, never met someone outside your network). On top of that when you write your internship application, it contains no hint of your enthusiasm and zeal to learn. And you still expect someone to offer you a meaningful internship? You expect a lot from others.
The truth is neither your college, and nor your parents owe you a career. That responsibility is yours alone to shoulder. Most of the reasons listed above are ‘curable’ – but they require sincerity in heart and a persistent desire to improve. You can always start in time for your next internship, improve your English, learn to write a professional resume, and learn a new skill every year.
The question is Will you, for once, act like a grown up or continue to whine?
Image credit: – http://bitterbananas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/blamegame.jpg
