Landing my first internship after facing 23 rejections – A writer’s story
About the Author: Aprajeeta Singh is pursuing B.E. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Sri Aurobindo Institute of Technology, Indore. She provides insightful details about her journey as a content writing intern and how she bagged 6 different internships even after facing more than 30 rejections.
One day, when my brother was stuck in his projects, he gave one of his content writing assignments to me. When I completed it, he was impressed with my work and suggested me to do internships through Internshala.
My journey with Internshala began in December 2014. I applied for 7 internships on the first day itself. I waited for 3 days but didn’t receive any replies. When I asked my brother, he said, “You are not the only one available with skills; you have to compete and give your best to stand out from the crowd.” I understood the fact and continued applying; however, I got rejected by 23 companies. I was disheartened; I was sure that my submissions weren’t that bad. I again consulted my brother and he explained that it’s not always about errors, it could be due to my approach as well. So, I developed a better answer for the inevitable question, “Why should we hire you?” I practiced writing answers in the format of an email with proper greetings and salutation, mentioned my skills and experiences in a more structured format, and worked on conveying the ‘reason of my interest in the company and my knowledge about the company background’ in a better way during interviews. And soon my hard work paid off. I finally got hired for a content editor profile at Scribblers. They liked my write-up and my internship began. I was very excited, but it involved writing 2-3 articles daily with the deadline of few hours. I enjoyed the work for 2 days, but then rechecking and re-editing was also added to my work plan. It demanded a lot of accuracy and speed and I couldn’t cope with the pressure of deadlines. I found I was still lagging in few skills and so I left the internship in few days after informing my mentor.
For next 2 months, I worked on the most common grammatical errors that I was making and went through some of the basic concepts thoroughly. I read several books and novels to improve my vocabulary and started using additional language tools that were available on the internet. I wrote few articles and asked my faculties to review them and only when I received satisfactory comments, I started applying for more internships.
Soon I got shortlisted by MavCure. I was asked to write a well-researched, non-plagiarized test article on “Ayurvedic Medicine for a cough”. They liked the article and I was selected as the content writing intern. I enjoyed the work; it taught me a lot about the brevity of the content, time management, and managing the quality of an article when minimum word limit was 2000 words. It was not easy but it did wonders for my writing skills. The internship got over in 2 months and I took a break for my semester examinations.
I made a goal that at the end of my exams I should have an internship in my hand. Thus, while preparing for the exams, I devoted an hour every day to apply for internships. In that duration, I wrote about 4-5 articles as assignments and got shortlisted for 3 internships one week before my last exam. I attended a telephonic interview for Fusion49. I was asked about my schedule, about how I would manage college and internship together, and whether I could write lengthy, SEO friendly articles. They were satisfied with my answers and next day I had to write a test article. As I opened my inbox on the eve of the last exam, there it was – the confirmation email of my selection as the content development intern at Fusion49. I had accomplished my goal.
Just after the exam, I went to the Training & Placement cell of my college and asked for the letter of recommendation. That day brought further accolades as I didn’t just get the LOR but our TPO head also offered me the chance to be the Student Placement Coordinator for my initiatives and out of the box thinking. I gladly accepted the offer.
Internshala helped me unearth the skills that were trapped deep within me. It also helped in developing my personality as I attended several workshops organized by them. I got fascinated by their Digital Marketing workshop as well and currently, I’m pursuing training and tutorials in that field as well. I will always be thankful to Internshala for the opportunities it gave me and for showing me that I can always follow my passion irrespective of my location and time constraints.
Inspired by Aprajeeta’s journey? Check out these cool content writing internships & virtual internships and discover the writer inside you!
