internshipIN

Wow! internshipIN was just listed as one of Inc Magazine’s “Coolest College Startups.” On the night that internshipIN was conceived, we had the goal of helping just a few students in finding their first internships. Little did we know that internshipIN would earn recognition as a cool, up and coming startup.

We’re flattered, but we won’t let the onslaught of press distract us. With internship season underway, we’ve been working to bring a wider array of internship opportunities to the website. Our newest feature set gives student members a list of the top 10 most relevant internships, based on their skills and interests.

Click here to check out Inc Magazine’s list of “Coolest College Startups”. Be sure to vote us up as the coolest one of all!

We’re excited about the startups and students that have been successfully connecting through our site. Do you have any great stories? Send them in!

We will be working throughout the next month and a half to bring our users a completely new feature set. In the meanwhile, there won’t be any significant changes to our main site, so hang tight as we take a blogging hiatus.

Have a happy holiday season — full of internship applications! (We’d never forget.)

Hearing from YOU!
Earlier this afternoon, we had a great conference call with some of the employers who have created listings on internshipIN. Our number one goal, of course, is to provide a useful tool that can benefit both startups and students, so we value feedback from our users and any suggestions they have for improvement!

What are employers looking for?
There’s no reason for any college student not to be able to find an internship this season — the employers we talked to proved that there are plenty of great startups out there seeking hungry, talented interns.

Though many of these internships are currently unpaid, the startups emphasized the quality, hands-on experience that interns would be able to get working with tight-knit and passionate teams.

Another commonality that we saw is that several companies are searching for representatives — street teams, if you will — that can serve as the eyes and ears of the company on as many campuses as possible. They want to develop closer ties to a variety of schools — even the smaller ones, not just the more widely known schools.

Rather than having hundreds of businesses or job seekers sending in generic resumes or portfolios, companies are hoping to use internshipIN to bring in interns with specific skills and interests, whether that’s marketing or programming.

How can employers amp up their company profiles and internship listings?
If your internship is paid, that’s a huge bonus, especially in this economy — don’t be afraid to emphasize it! If it’s not, highlight the hands-on experience your interns will receive, the fun company culture, and the beneficial connections they’ll make. We know it’s about more than free labor for your company, but show those internship applicants that you’ll take the time to train them and share your industry knowledge. Let them know that they’ll leave with more than just lines on a resume.

Can we help?
We’d love to! Not having as much luck as you’d hoped for with your internship listing? Feel free to shoot an email to us at arielle(at)internshipIN.com or teresa(at)internshipIN.com, and we’ll be happy to give our feedback based on what we see students looking for in their internship searches. After all… we’re students too! Also, check out our Feedback Forum to share your thoughts and ideas.

Big thank yous…
To Mike Admani of A&R Mike Admani, Rosie Panzarello of Mevio.com, Robert Boyle of Tipvision.com, Yvette Thomas of WaitWear.com, and Richard Price of Academia.edu for helping us improve internshipIN! Students — come check out some of their awesome internship opportunities here:

• A&R Mike Admani
• Mevio.com
• Tipvision.com
• WaitWear.com
• Academia.edu

We received some great feedback from the readers over at TechCrunch. It was definitely overwhelming to see some of the passionate ideas and suggestions that readers had.

Two common reccuring questions appeared that we immediately wanted to address. The first was: Are we a business or some afterschool side project? The second question inquired about our value proposition — what makes us different in the increasingly crowded internship market?

These are great questions and luckily, easy for us to answer.

1. Are we a company?

Yup. We believe a company is an organization that finds a problem for a group of people, solves it for them, and receives payment in return. We do just that!

We found a problem. We found that large companies dominate college campuses and university recruitment efforts. This bothered both us, as students, because we didn’t want corporate-sponsored polarized views on what job opportunities are available. PLUS this obviously bothered the smaller companies who needed kick butt talent to build their teams.

We offer an unique solution. With internshipIN, startups can post their listings with their only competition being other startups and (coming soon) they will have access to our student databases, rating systems, personalized tracking features, etc.

We make money for providing a solution. All of our features will be available at a super affordable price. Although the price is minor in comparison to the service we provide, we will charge for our services so we can afford to make them better for you!

Currently, our product is at the very early stages of becoming the link between startups and students, but it gets closer every day.

2. How do we compete in such a crowded market?

This is simple. We aren’t competing. We adore the internship search services that already available from companies like YouIntern.com, Interneval.com, InternshipRatings.com, Craigslist, and so on.

We think they all do great jobs at fulfilling the mission to help students. However, our mission is different — we want to connect smaller companies with students specifically. We want to add smaller companies into the student arsenal and show them ALL of the opportunities that are available for building their careers. We know we can only do this by going beyond listings and reviews, and that’s what we plan to do!

What are your thoughts? What makes a business?

It’s been quite a month of late nights, brainstorming sessions, and e-mail exchanges for the cofounders. Today’s kind of a big deal for us. Presidential election aside (we’re first time voters!), internshipIN launched earlier this afternoon — we’re now ready for companies to start posting up their internship listings. We’re still working out the kinks, but we welcome your feedback and suggestions. Feel free to follow our updates on Twitter.

Oh, and did we mention? We’re looking for student ambassadors. It’s a great way to make connections and get a firsthand look into working on a startup. Check the listing here.

PS: They even wrote about us over at TechCrunch!

Hey everyone!

I’m not sure if you got a chance to read our last post which was appropriately titled “7 Reasons You Should Pay Your Interns,” but you may have noticed that we have a new team member!

Teresa Wu joins us as our community manager and marketing extraordinaire. Don’t believe she’s incredible? Check out her personal blog and her hilarious site, mymomisafob.

Teresa is a social media information queen who truly believes in our goal to help startups and students connect. So feel free to take notes as she gives you everything you need to know about managing internships and interns the web 2.0 way.

Hey guys!

So sorry about the time off on the blog. Jess, Andy and I were taken over by midterms.

The good news is we got right back to work and internshipIN is officially here!!

We have just launched private beta for all employers! What this means is a selective group of startups can set up a company profile and post their internship opportunities today.

In short, these companies will be have first dibs on the hundreds of students who come in.

PS We have some REALLY cool features coming up in the next couple of weeks. My eyes glitter when I think about them.

We’ve found maintaining workflow is one of the most difficult problems students have as an intern. Most of the boring, unpleasant work is dumped you - the human garbage disposal … er… the intern - and you consume the work as work experience. This method may work well for the average intern, but you’re not average.

Here’s my tip – find ONE goal you plan to achieve during your internship and make damn sure you accomplish it. Sure, you should gain as much experience as possible, but you should also walk away with something tangible.

Want to optimize your time at an internship? Here’s what you should do:

1. Find where you want to be after the internship (your goal)

2. Tell your boss your goal on the first day

3. Rank your assignments by how close they will get you to your goal.

The cool thing is this doesn’t just pertain to interns. Here’s a bit more real world application. At internshipIN, we’ve been talking with several employers from across the world (literally!). We recently made the decision to keep our launch restricted to the San Francisco Bay Area for now.

You have no idea how much we would love to connect talented interns with some of the most innovative startups in the globe, but if we are going to truly help people we need to do it well. We want you to love using internshipIN, and we can’t give you support if we are spread too thin.

Got any ideas on where we should go next? Shoot us an email at contact at internshipIN.com. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Wanna know something cool?

We opened up our beta launch sign up list and we were ABSOLUTELY surprised at how well we were received by both students and employers! Let’s just say we signed up 20 employers from the moment we launched at 3:00 AM to 9:00 AM. At least I think that is cool.

Feel free to sign up at internshipin.com.

Other than that, we are moving along as quickly as possible to make sure you can either find or post your internship opportunities.

See you soon!