Hey Reader!

Disclaimer: this newsletter is about my internship search and general career-related noodlings. If you’re in the same stage of life, amazing! If not, there’s still a chance you’ll find some of the tips useful 🤷‍♀️ or you can skip to the end of the newsletter for my weekly recs!

The first and second half of uni feel like night and day. For the first two years, everything was so peaceful. We were living in this small town, immersed in our classes, going with the flow 😎 (I’m looking back on it with rose-tinted glasses, but you get the idea). Then, bam! Third year begins. BIG CITY, INTERNSHIPS, EXCHANGE, CHOOSING ELECTIVES, GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS…

It’s all a bit stressful! My main focus right now is to find a summer internship, so here’s how I’ve been approaching it all:

💼 First of all, I’ve been getting some experience:

Over the summer, I did a Branding & Business Analytics externship through Paragon One. It was an 8-week remote program for Beats by Dr. Dre where we investigated why over-ear headphones are trending with Gen Z. I loved it and discovered how much I actually enjoy doing customer research! It blends my academic side with my corporate, marketing girlie side 💅 I got a certificate of (outstanding 😏) completion and tangible skills to put on my CV.

Right now I’m the middle of one of their externship labs. This one is also about Consumer Insights, but it’s for a collapsible coffee mug company and half as long.

Paragon One has all sorts of externships and externship labs with companies like National Geographic, HUGO BOSS, and PWC, and externs rate them 9/10 for their usefulness in achieving career goals. I’m also featured on this week’s edition of their newsletter, the Community Drop, which I’ve been closely following for their career advice and announcements of new externships. You can check out all of the externships here and also get this handy dandy mega-list of spring & summer 2024 internships.

👩‍💻 Next, I updated my CV.

This was mandatory for our university’s “Career Development Training,” but I realized it was a good opportunity to take some time to perfect my CV We got access to this magical tool called Vmock where you upload your CV and get very specific advice like: change a verb there, add some leadership skills there… etc.

✍️ Next, I made a list of internships

I can’t tell you for how long this nebulous task—“research internships”—remained untouched on my to-do list. I finally set aside a chunk of time on my calendar and started poring through listings and opening hundreds of tabs.

One of the best “hidden gems” I found is a job board called Generation Hired. I also follow a few “LinkedIn-fluencers” that share internship opportunities, like Taylor Falls. My university’s talent & Careers department sends us a weekly spreadsheet of opportunities, but I haven’t used it much because it’s mostly for Europe and I’m searching for internships in the US. I also had some companies in mind that seemed interesting to work for, so I checked their websites to see if they had any programs for students.

(And you can take a look at that spreadsheet of 100s of spring & summer 2024 internship opportunities.)

✅ I organized my list in order to tackle it effectively:

Here’s the fun part: I created a Notion database with the following properties:

• Company
• Role (ex. Digital Marketing intern, Public Relations intern)
• Application due date
• Notes (for example, the company’s “early careers” Instagram page to follow, thoughts on what to mention in my application, etc.)
• Link to the job listing
• Location
• Salary
• Time period (specific dates, if available, otherwise just “summer 2024” or “11 weeks”)
• Rating (how interested I am, on a scale of one to three ⭐s)

I actually just added this to my FREE Adulting Dashboard Notion template (find it in the “Career” page), if you’d like to copy the format.

💬 With my list of internships and snazzy new CV, I met with my career adviser

We have an adviser assigned specifically to those of us who are interested in the marketing & communications field. Together, we went over my CV and he gave me some advice on tailoring my application to each of the companies on my list (he suggested I used a tool called Jobscan, which I haven’t tried yet). I’ll be reaching out to him here and there when I want him to look over a cover letter or something.

And… that’s all for now! I’m thinking of making a video of the whole internship search process. Do reply to this email and let me know if you find this sort of content interesting :)

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ICYMI

I’ve been making more Reels! Check out my weekly cleaning routine (I cracked the back glass of my phone filming this 🥲) and my very cute system for tracking final projects for school.

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This week's video

IT’S ALMOST 2024! Here’s what I’m doing to prepare (and my snazzy new haircut & color).

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A few of my favorite things

🎶 My top songs of 2023 🌟 (feel free to follow me on Spotify while you’re there, hehe.)

😂 I’ve been playing Impractical Jokers clip compilations in the background while I work for some comforting background noise that reminds me of home (I live alone). For other “comfort shows”, y’all also recommended Gilmore Girls, The Office, Friends, and How I Met Your Mother.

✍️ Journaling in Day One. At the end of the year, I get so sentimental and I look at my “on this day” entries every morning. At this point, I sometimes have as many as 3 years of entries to look back through. I also used Day One for my yearly review!

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❔ An exercise for you

Even if you’re not searching for internships, I’m sure you have a big, confusing project that you haven’t been starting on. Do what I did and just:

1. Make a list of what you need to do and
2. Put some time on your calendar to do it

It's really that simple. Maybe even set a date with someone to work together (AKA the body doubling effect).

I know this is the same advice I always give, but sometimes you just need to re-hear it! I'm here cheering you on :)

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​Find all editions of the newsletter here. Thank you for reading, and have a lovely week.

Lots of love,
Beatrice