internshipIN

This is a guest post by Ted Williams

After 125,093 votes, Intuit is crowned internship king! Intuit received over 38,000 final round votes for internship king. InternshipKing held a people’s choice award for America’s best internship.

1. April 1-25: Vote for America’s best internship
2. April 25: Top 10 internships announced. Final round of voting begins.
3. May 5: Voting ends. America’s best internship announced.

The Intuit internship program is highlighted by

• work assignments that are critical to the business with written goals
• extensive training to jump start your career development
• exposure to their leadership team
• a buddy program for extra guidance and support when you need it
• reviews and written evaluations
• opportunities to share what you’ve learned and to teach your team
• fun social events!

About Intuit: Intuit started small in 1983 with Quicken personal finance software, simplifying a common household dilemma: balancing the family checkbook. Little more than two decades later, their revenue tops $3 billion, they’re publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, and recognized as America’s most-admired software company and one of the country’s best places to work.

The rest of the top 5 include: (2) SiriusXM, (3) Moosejaw, (4) Liggett Stashower, and (5) Southwest Airlines.

Guest Post By Ted Williams

GPA and test scores matter too much. But let’s look at it from a company or admissions office point of view.

Without a clear track record of results, a company and admission office should choose the smarter candidate. And they do and so would you.

There is not enough other comparable information to be used to make a sound judgment. You just can’t tell that much from a student’s resume or interview because they haven’t had the chance to do that much. It is completely different than evaluating somebody when they are 35. Candidates can look the same on paper and in interviews. Therefore, the company or admissions office has the choice: if both applicants seem to have the same soft skills on paper and in the interview, why would they ever choose the less intelligent candidate?

I had a couple friends from high school, Sam and Jeremy, who both applied for jobs at Nike. Sam had a 3.86 GPA and Jeremy had a 3.41. Sam got the job. Jeremy loves Nike. He has worn their shoes since he was seven and has wanted to work for them since high school. He did all his college business class projects on the company and as crazy as it sounds, he reads about the shoe industry daily. Sam applied on a whim. Sam got the job, Jeremy got rejected.

No doubt intelligence matters, but I believe passion, likability, enthusiasm for the company, people skills, the ability to get things done, energy, and originality matter more. The issue is the hiring systems don’t take into account these items because they just can’t be measured. Therefore, a student’s only way to get this across is by becoming creative in the application process – which shouldn’t be the point.

GPA and test scores win, and they should, until companies find a way to get a glimpse into a student’s intangibles. The companies that find a way to do this will get better people. Period.

All five people that interviewed me at Google asked the same first question, “What Google products do you use and what is your favorite?”
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Ted Williams runs GrouperEye.com

Ready or not, it’s time to start applying to internships!

Don’t wait until the middle of March to panic about your summer employment. Trust us — we’ve been there, and it’s not fun! The time to start is now. Applying early will demonstrate your initiative and interest. Can’t go wrong there.

Luckily, we’ve just set up a new feature that’ll help you get the most out of your internship search. Now you can build or upload your resume right on our site. Not only will you be able to access all of our internship listings, but you can get recruitment letters from interested companies right in your inbox.

Hurry! Go crank out that resume and post it up. Your dream startup internship is waiting.

What’s that? We’re your favorite people?

We know. We’re our favorite people too.

Email us if you need help!

Sure, it’s only November, but believe it or not, tons of companies start looking for interns this early. That means one thing: it’s about time you start beefing up your resume. Here are 10 tips to get the most out of your resume and land your dream internship!

1. Keep it to one page. If you’ve recently graduated, you probably have just enough work experience to comfortably fill one page. If you have less, expand a bit on your school clubs, volunteer projects, additional skills, etc. On the flip side, even if you’ve had nine internships, nobody cares about all nine. Don’t try to squeeze them all in — focus on the most recent positions that are relevant to the internship or job you’re applying for. Unless you’re a college freshman, your high school stuff has got to go too.

2. Here’s what you need to include. Name, address, phone, email, blog/website. Work experience, affiliations, education, skills. Your email should be something professional with your first and last name. One of my classmates recently gave me his email address: h3ybab3@[emailprovider].com. SERIOUSLY? I wouldn’t even be able to give that to my peers with a straight face, much less to an employer. If your blog or website is professional enough to show off and reflects your career interests, include it — it adds another dimension and is a great demonstration of your expertise/abilities.

3. Clean it up and use bullet points. This isn’t difficult, but I’ve seen my fair share of disasters. LINE STUFF UP. Microsoft Word is practically begging you to do it. Don’t use flashy fonts or colors; keep it simple. Uncommon fonts also tend not to show the same on everybody’s computers, which could mess up your formatting too. Write concise, easy-to-digest single lines that convey your accomplishments. Stay consistent with the number of points under each job to keep your resume looking as balanced and organized as possible.

4. Use powerful language and don’t be vague. How many times have you heard “use action verbs?” Well, it’s true. Use them. Start your bullet points with strong verbs (some from my resume: developed, implemented, coordinated, managed, directed). Don’t list responsibilities; describe your accomplishments and the solid results that you produced (e.g. trained 30 employees, boosted revenue by 25%, etc.) Instead of simply stating that you have strong leadership skills, demonstrate through the details about your work experience. (Don’t, however, use inflated jargon to describe your accomplishments.) And that’s great that you were a part of PPCA or CFS, but it’s meaningless if nobody knows what it is — make sure it’s clear.

5. Tailor your resume to the company you’re applying for. Focus on what the employer wants. Your resume is like marketing copy: Every word should sell you. Figure out exactly which of your qualifications make you a prime candidate for that position, and emphasize, emphasize, emphasize. Eliminate everything that isn’t relevant or impressive. So you cleaned tables at Red Lobster? Put papers in alphabetical order? Unless this somehow shows skills that your next employer is looking for, it’s not important.

6. Don’t give everything away. Make the person reading your resume curious about your work experience. If you tell everything there is to tell in your resume, you’ll come off as unimpressive in the interview. Give yourself space to expand on your achievements.

7. Ask for feedback, and then edit. Go to parents, friends, counselors, mentors, your professional network. What impression does your resume make? What suggestions do they have for you to improve it? Not everyone will agree, but you can get a general idea of how your resume comes across and edit according to your best judgment. The more eyes read over your resume, the less needless errors you’ll have. (Feel free to email me, and I’ll give you my two cents.)

8. Always take copies with you when you’re meeting with any sort of professional. You never know if the person you’re doing an informational interview with just might ask for one. (I’ve made this mistake with a top editor at a magazine and slapped myself the whole elevator ride down.)

9. In the same vein, keep your resume updated at all times. You might just meet someone who has the perfect internship for you. Don’t have a panic session trying to fix up your resume last minute — add your new work experience as you go. This’ll also keep you brushed up on exactly what you have written, meaning you won’t have to refresh yourself nearly as much come time to interview.

10. Maintain multiple versions of your resume. This may seem silly and excessive, but I save a new copy of my resume every time I apply for new positions. Though I generally apply to the same types of internships, it’s still useful to have ones with specific goals. For example, I have an editorial resume that includes all of the mags, blogs, and e-zines I’ve contributed to. I also have a social media resume that emphasizes my web 2.0 knowledge but doesn’t include every single bit of writing experience, because some of that frankly doesn’t pertain to social media/online marketing. With multiple versions ready to go, you’ll already have a batch to pick and choose from, making it easier to tweak that resume for a specific internship.

Agree? Disagree? Got more suggestions? Tell me about it in the comments. Need more resume advice? There’s a wealth of resources out there. Here’s a Delicious.com search of “resume,” which will direct you to many more helpful articles.

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?

Where are all of the good intern bloggers?

Here is our list of the best intern thinkers out there so far (not in any order, of course!):

1. All of the interns from Revision3. Seriously, Grace Soriano-Smith is doing a kick arse job at putting together Revision3’s intern program!

2. Unfair Internships. Finally someone speaks up for the abuse of college labor. I’ll give you my personal thoughts on unpaid internships in another post, but this blog is great for communicating student rights.

I know… sad, right? I guess I am now on a search to find 8 more intern bloggers who are just as cool — if not better!

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!

internshipIN is helping students find opportunities at startups and small(er) companies. Why would students want to intern for startups, you ask? Well there are thousands of reasons, but I settled on the first six that came to my mind this morning. Enjoy!

1. Sense of Pride
This one is simple. How successful do you think the interns at Facebook, LinkedIN, Yelp or Meebo feel? There is a strong sense of pride that comes with getting involved with a company on the ground level and watching it grow before your eyes, especially if you have the opportunity to share your ideas (see Reason #5).

2. Interdisciplinary Skill-building
Everyone grows up thinking they want a particular career in life, only to come to college and change their minds 3 - 4 times. Wouldn’t it suck if you were a business major and only got business-oriented internships and in your last year discovered you had a HUGE passion for website design. I’ll bet you would feel almost trapped to your business career even though it isn’t what will make you happy. But at startups, the job responsibilities are usually more fluid and open. You can dabble in almost everything and really get a feel for what kinds of work you enjoy!

3. The coolest co-workers & bosses ever!
I would say a large percentage of all startups begin because the founders are passionate about what they are doing/building. Sure, they’re go-getters and risk-takers, but they are having a helluva a lot of fun doing something they love. It’s a lot more interesting to work with people who actually enjoy their work opposed to someone waiting for the clock to hit 5 PM.

4. They like you! They really like you!
Piggybacking off of #3 - they hired you because they like you! Startups are small groups of people all working to develop something remarkable. They want you to be a part of the group because you are awesome and you fit perfectly into their small community. They don’t want to just be your employers, they want friendship! Whoa… this is a big one.

5. Your opinion matters!
This one is my favorite. Guess what! At startups, you’re opinion actually matters and encouraged! You can offer solutions on how to improve the product, work processes, etc. So, when you are updating your resume after the internship you can add how you actually improved the company or product itself. I don’t know about you, but “conceptualized and implemented a new customer service solution” sounds a lot better than “managed all filing processes”.

6. Work on something you love
This is another favorite. One of the greatest things about startups is there are tons of them and many have really really cool ideas that appeal to almost everyone. Why not seek out internships at startups that resonate with you? For example, time management is not exactly one of my best friends. I adore how Timebridge and 37Signals are helping people (and me!) manage our time. An internship with these companies would be perfect for me. What about you??