The secret to landing a great internship
It all comes down to one power-tool…
That is it, the spring semester started, and all around students are coming back to school to face an endless stream of new courses and assignments, and to top it all off, they must manage it all with summer internship research already at the back of their mind.
Today companies are expecting much more from graduates than just a degree. This means University students while doing their best to graduate, must balance their education with researches for work experience and extracurricular activities.
Which is why there is no space for procrastination and why you should use all the tips and tricks you can find to manage it all. One of which is identifying your potential best friend and probable worst enemy in the battle to organize your workload and be a productive student: your inbox.
Once you realize most of your communication goes through it, whether it be assignments, course updates, internship requests and interview inquiries, it becomes clear that one of the bests way to optimize your time and achieve your goals is to be on top of your email game.
So here are a couple tips to manage your email communication, stop wasting time and improve your skills to land the perfect internship or graduate job (and make sure you hand-in all the semester’s assignments on time).
Improve your email inquiry system
First off, you need a system. Randomly emailing a couple companies a month does not constitute one.
To get the best work opportunity you have to really pin point what you are looking to learn, what you could offer and start looking at all the companies you could contact. There should be a lot.
Then, that’s where your work begins, you need to send them the perfect email introduction with a spot on resume. This email should outline your strengths, and any relevant experience you could draw on to do the job. This email should also include a paragraph as to why you are interested in the company and why you would be a good fit.
I am sure by now you are probably wondering how you are supposed to do all that for every single company, and how much time and effort will go into crafting each individual email.
Well, to be honest, it is going to take some effort, but you can do it efficiently by using templates. With them, you can create the perfect internship email example which you will then tweak for each company.
Templates will allow you to make sure your copy is perfect and your grammar impeccable, they will save you time, prevent any copy-pasting errors and give you additional tools to personalize your emails and tailor them to the company you are contacting. This is a great habit to get into as early as possible as it will later help you get a graduate job.
You will be able to multiply your efforts and their results.
Be on top of your communication
If you want to be a productive student, you need to keep a close eye on your inbox communication, but that doesn’t mean checking your inbox all the time. It means making smarter decisions about the emails you send and how you handle the emails you receive.
For example, you can track your emails to know if people opened them and interacted with them. This allows you to decide which recruiters and companies to keep in touch with, separating those who have interest from those who don’t, it also gives you precious feedback on which internship email subject or content worked better according to its open rate.
I used to stress over whether or not someone had read my email and whether or not I should send follow up emails. Now that I am able to track my emails, I no longer need to worry about this and can focus my time on other things.
D.Y. Huang ‘20
To make sure you never lose track of an work internship opportunity you can also schedule follow-up reminders so you can chase people with no risk of being too spammy.
As a safety caution, just schedule a follow-up reminder 10 days after your initial email is sent and if you haven’t received an answer the email will come back inside your inbox where you will be able to see if it has been opened by the recipient and choose how to follow-up with them accordingly. It is also a great tool to be reminded to ask for some feedback on your application, that way you can learn from it and improve.
Be more professional with your emails
I’m sure you know the basics, but in good conscious, I should once again insist by saying that your emails should be carefully proofread and that you should send them from your official student address or at least one that does not reflect your teenage years and supposedly funny puns.
Now that we covered that, another professional aspect you need to keep in mind is the timing. Don’t risk looking irresponsible by sending your emails in the middle of the night, schedule them to be sent first thing in the morning. Don’t risk blowing your chances with a manager by sending an email cover letter at 2 am.
Just prepare your emails and decide when you want them to be received for them to be automatically sent later. It’s that easy.You also need to make sure you never forget to get back to someone when they reach out to you or answer your emails. Even when it is to let you down or if you are no longer looking for a job opportunity or if you are not interested in their offer. Be professional, don’t risk offending someone, don’t burn bridges, always get back to people.
If you can’t get to an email right away then snooze it. The email will move out of your inbox only to return at a time of your choosing. This will help you keep track of your communications and organize your inbox without filling it with emails “you’ll get to” one day. It will also help you to be on top of your assignments.
An absolute game changer. I use the snooze feature to make sure I never forget a note from a professor after procrastinating for a week on assignment. The tracking feature reveals whether a TF is completely ignoring my request to regrade a pset, or just hasn’t opened my emails yet. The send-later feature lets me schedule emails to be sent promptly at 9am in the morning, like a responsible student — convenient when I need to hide the fact that I finally got around to checking my emails at 1am after binging Netflix. — N.Y. Lee ‘19
All of these will make your communication more efficient and more professional, they are easy to implement and will really improve your chances of getting that internship or graduate job.
Power user tip
One last tip to manage your workload both when it comes to emails and other tasks: use a to-do app. Keep track of all the things you need to get done and when. Kanban boards are a great visual way to manage your tasks, and you can include them right inside your inbox to save even more time.
Gmelius recently figured in an article from Harvard Crimson, detailing how we helped their students.
