HIRE ME PLEASe!
ternship tips for in n ve ro p y ll ca fi non-scienti eting students rk a m t en m in a rt advertising & ente l by Laura Claypoo
January 2019
CONTENTS
-about me -MY INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE -7 parts of my internship application process 1. Get non-internship experience 2. Know your industry 3. Research internships 2019 Advertising Industry Cheat Sheet 2019 Entertainment and Media Industry Cheat Sheet 4. Get your resume and cover letters together 5. Apply, apply, apply 6. Interview and post-interview 7. Accept/decline offers
-EXTRA RESOURCES
-----------DISCLAIMER-----------
I cannot guarantee that anything in this pdf will get you your dream internship. Let me know if it does, though! Also, most of this advice is tailored to people looking to work in the advertising, public relations or entertainment marketing industries, so if you’re trying to become a nutritionist, real estate agent or financial advisor, I don’t know if any of this will apply to you. I didn’t start doing all of this overnight. I learned a lot from going to Chapman University’s career center, talking to mentors, reading articles online, and just applying and interviewing for the past four years. Above all: 1. Just keep applying! 2. Sometimes you will do everything right and some external factor will prevent you from getting the internship, so refer to #1. All opinions and photos are my own. No person or company sponsored this guide. 1
ABOUT ME
I am a 21-year-old girl who is originally from Seattle, WA. In December 2018, I graduated from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts in Orange County, CA with a bachelor’s degree in public relations and advertising. Coming into college, I wasn’t really sure what I would do with that degree. After gaining some internship experience, I have learned that I want to combine my interests in social media, events, technology, entertainment, and advertising to work in entertainment marketing. The Chapman community is very competitive in terms of internships and student involvement. It seemed like everyone was constantly interning and in 10 clubs all the time and explains why I wanted to intern the summer after freshman year. I had a cringeworthy cover letter and no idea how to apply to internships, but I cold-emailed dozens of advertising agencies in Seattle that I had never heard of before. The internship application process never really got easier for me. Even though I thought my resume got stronger every time, applications were very stressful and I got rejected/ghosted by so, so many companies. I eventually learned to expect companies not to respond to you, only apply to internships posted within a month, and make my resume readable by machines. In terms of career prep, I started going to Chapman’s career center and had them review my resume periodically, starting freshman year. To display my writing, design, advertising, and photography projects, I created a website on WordPress. I bought my domain, lauraclaypool.com, sophomore year through godaddy.com and switched to using Adobe Portfolio to design and host my website (Adobe Portfolio is free through all Photoshop plans). I designed my business cards with Photoshop and printed them using Vistaprint and kept redesigning my resume until the end of junior year. I ordered a padfolio to keep copies of my resume and bring it to every job interview. Together, all of these developed my personal branding, which if you’re working in marketing, is a good thing to practice anyway.
website
cover letter resume 2
business card
MY INTERNSHIP EXPERIENCE
I came into college not really knowing what my major entailed. You don’t learn what a publicist or advertising strategist does in high school, but interning really helped me understand what a public relations or an advertising role looked like. I didn’t know anyone in Los Angeles, and my family didn’t offer any contacts in the advertising or entertainment industry, but I knew it was the right major for me. I chose to come to Chapman, which is smaller school (about 8,000 undergrad), and I knew that when I graduated, I’d be competing for jobs with people from my own class, but also with graduates from bigger state schools who have much larger career centers and alumni networks like USC and UCLA. Therefore, to be confident that I could find employment after graduation, I personally decided to pack my resume with internship experience. Throughout my time in college, I had five internships at agencies and media companies of different sizes, all of which I obtained by simply applying online. It was rarely an easy process, and my friends know I was stressed for months during applications and interviews, but it all worked out. For more details about the actual work I did, you can refer to my LinkedIn profile. Bullseye Creative | advertising agency | account intern | Seattle, WA | summer 2016 Office Size: 5 employees Schedule: Monday/Tuesday/Thursday, 9:00am-4:00pm Compensation: none You might need to rough it your first internship. I had to use my own computer and carpooled with my dad in the morning, who dropped me off at a cafe around 7:15am, where I’d sit and edit photos or read until I was supposed to go in at 9am. I was done at 4pm, then I’d walk a mile and a half to my dad’s office and wait until he was done with work. This internship was unpaid and I was going abroad in the fall, so I also had to work a cashier job at Big 5 Sporting Goods or take senior photos the other four days of the week to make money. Looking back, it was a good way to ease into interning, since it wasn’t a huge intimidating company and there wasn’t too much pressure to not mess up. Endemol Shine North America | tv studio | marketing intern | North Hollywood, CA | summer 2017 Office Size: 100+ empoloyees Schedule: Monday-Friday, 9:00am-6:00pm Compensation: $12.50/hour This internship was through the Television Academy Foundation’s summer internship program. There were over 30 categories to choose from in the television industry, from screenwriting to costume design to animation. This first step of the application involved a professional statement and letter of recommendation. The second round was sending in a video interview. The TVAF is also known as the Emmys Foundation, so interns get invited to the Creative Arts Emmys. Once you’re done interning, you become alumni and still get invited to industry events. I probably could have found a subletter for summer in my apartment in Orange and just rented a spot from someone in Los Angeles, but I didn’t. I drove 96 miles a day, leaving my apartment by 7:30am and getting back by 9:00pm, but it was one of my favorite internships and well-worth the commute. 3
Amusement Park | Public Relations Intern | advertising agency | Santa Ana, CA | spring 2018 Office Size: 60 employees Schedule: Monday/Tuesday/Thursday 9:00am to 4:00pm, Wednesday 9:00am-6:00pm Compensation: $11.00/hour A few Chapman adjunct professors work their day jobs at AP, and lot of Chapman PR&Ad students intern there. There are usually at least four interns among different departments, and you work together to prepare for meetings and decorate for holidays. This was a close-knit agency and they called it the “AP family.” I would intern then go to class from 4:00-5:15pm or 4:00-10:00pm. Thankfully, AP was only a 15 minute drive from my apartment. Interning during the school year is definitely a challenge to balance all your classes, clubs, and internship work, so I’d only recommend it if you’re really good at time management or are okay with only getting less than 8 hours of sleep. Fox Searchlight | International Marketing Intern | film studio | Century City, CA | summer 2018 Office Size: 500+ employees on the lot Schedule: Monday/Wednesday/Thursday, 9:00am-6:00pm Compensation: $14.00/hour Fox was my dream company. I always thought that maybe one day, after a few jobs, I could work my way there, so I was so excited to be able to intern there during college. Fox has a large internship program with recruiters who organized lot tours, networking events, and lunch and learns. There are about 200 interns each summer! My team only had four people, but the Fox Lot and Fox Plaza were huge. I had moved to Los Angeles, so my commute this summer was only 15 minutes thank goodness! Some perks of interning at a huge film studio was getting to watch films before they came out in theaters. There were several screenings and events per month. However, there was also a lot of secret information that you weren’t allowed to talk about, which is hard. I was interning when the Fox/Comcast/Disney situation was going on, so it was interesting to see the updates every day and hear how the execs talked about it. Variety | Strategic Partnerships Intern | media company | Westwood, CA | fall 2018 Office Size: 100+ employees Schedule: Monday/Wednesday/Friday, 9:30am-5:30pm Compensation: $13.25/hour I had applied to Variety for summer but didn’t get it, so I decided to apply again for fall. This was the most thorough interview process that I had ever done. I submitted my application online, then did a phone interview, then a video interview, sent in an example of a powerpoint I made for a class project, and then they checked two references. I got the role about two weeks before I started. I was only in two classes and commuting to Chapman on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so interning during the semester wasn’t that hard this time. I was also able to help out at eight of the events, which were sometimes on weeknights and weekends. 4
7 STEPS OF MY INTERNSHIP APPLICATION PROCESS 1. Get non-internship experience
To get an internship, especially your first internship, you need to have some sort of experience with transferrable skills, or any kind of leadership experience. For marketing majors, this might look like managing a club’s social media manager or being your sorority’s public relations director. For me, it was running my own photography business, being a part of University Program Board, and writing for Her Campus. I even had my Big 5 cashier job on my resume and explained how I dealt with customers and merchandise. For marketing and advertising, you want to do anything that shows your creativity. Writing is always an important skill. You could write for your school’s paper or your personal blog, contribute to the local newspaper, or write social media copy for a local business. A lot of job descriptions include programs that they want you to have experience in, so start familiarizing yourself with those programs. Advertising agencies need film producers and editors and you’ll work on real clients and get portfolio work, so film majors might want to look into internships at agencies! When I have the time and motivation, I try to get certified in programs like Google AdWords so I can put them on my LinkedIn and resume (check the last page for more info). Knowing how to use Google Drive, Google Sheets, PowerPoint, Excel, and Photoshop are also helpful.
2. KNOW YOUR INDUSTRY
How are you supposed to get an internship at a company if you don’t know what companies exist? Coming into college, I was a public relations and advertising major, but I could not have told you the name of a single agency. -What companies are the big players in your industry? -What companies are local? What companies do a lot of people from your school intern at? LinkedIn can help with figuring these questions out. Or just Google something like “(your field of interest) companies in (City, State).” For advertising majors, I recommend checking out Natalie Kim’s platform for helping junior talent, we-are-next.com. She has weekly podcasts, weekly email newsletters you can sign up for, occasional meet-ups, and internship and job listings. To learn more about different agencies, definitely listen to her podcast interviews. Keep up to date with the advertising industry by reading the trades, Adweek and AdAge. See who is getting awards for their work, check out the Clio Awards, Addys, Effie Awards, Webby Awards, and Cannes Lions. For social media, try reading Social Media Today. For entertainment, check out Variety, IndieWire, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter. They all have daily email newsletter lists that you can sign up for if you want news delivered straight to your inbox, many studio execs do. To keep all my news in one place and not have to subscribe to a hundred email lists, I use a news aggregator/RSS reader called Feedly. Other popular aggregators include Apple News phone app, News360 phone app, and Google News. How it works: you pick which news outlets you want to follow and the news aggregator will collect all the websites’ articles and put them into one newsfeed. You can then sort the outlets by category, like technology, entertainment, travel, etc. 5
3. RESEARCH INTERNSHIPS
Now that you know what companies are in your industry, now look if they offer internships. Most of them will have summer internship positions, but some of them will offer them during the school year as well. Applications for summer are most competitive, so you might have to apply 3 to 12 months in advance, so look ahead if you have a dream company. Smaller companies will have shorter timelines and may not post their applications until closer to when they would want you to start. Some small companies might not even post internship applications on their website, but you can try cold emailing them and ask if you could intern with them. Having a connection to the company will expedite the application process, but the rest of us need to hop on those online applications as soon as they come out. Know what you’re looking for so you aren’t wasting your time. -What kind of position are you looking for? Social media, finance, or media? Each position will probably require a different cover letter. I tried apply for a few different roles that I had interests in to see what I liked best. Figuring out what you don’t like is just as important as figuring out what you do like, and internships great ways to do so. -How far do you want to commute to work? Are you willing to spend three hours commuting in the car every day? Or do you want to have a remote internship and work from home? If it’s far, can you take public transportation? After commuting from Orange to North Hollywood, I knew I had to live in LA if I wanted to intern there again, so I moved to LA before starting at Fox in Century City. -Do you want to get paid? I mean, don’t we all? But the reality is you probably won’t be paid at every internship. Even some of the large companies only offer school credit. I was ok with no being paid for my first internship because I had zero experience, but after spending 4 days a week at Big 5, I was only looking for paid internships sophomore year and beyond. Paid internships do exist! -Does company size matter? At large companies, you probably won’t know everyone and might only work on certain tasks. There might be more established internship programs and more work perks (food, events, free stuff). At smaller companies, you might know everyone by name and get to work on all sorts of projects. There may be fewer perks, and you have to be a little more resourceful with smaller budgets and working with smaller clients. I interned at different sized companies and figured out that personally, I like bigger companies with large corporate offices. Besides writing cover letters, I spend the most time scouring job sites. I always discover companies and positions that I didn’t find while familiarizing myself with the industry. I use Entertainmentcareers.net, Indeed.com, Monster.com, Glassdoor.com, and LinkedIn jobs. Some companies don’t use job sites, they only post their applications on their own websites, so I will also frequently check those. They will either have a page on their website that says “internships” or “careers” or it might be on their contact page. For internships, I only applied to postings that were 30 days or newer. For jobs, I’m only applying to postings that are 2 weeks or newer. From my experience, you’ll be notified if you get an interview withing a week or two of applying, so you only have about 2 weeks to apply to a job posting. Therefore, when I don’t hear back from a recruiter after 2 weeks, I usually assume that I didn’t get the position, but that’s not always the case. If there’s a position you really want, you can politely email the company/recruiter for an update on your status. Don’t worry if you don’t have all the skills that they’re looking for, especially if they’re programs, because you can easily learn those. Studies show that women only apply to jobs that they feel 100% qualified for while men apply if they meet 60% of the requirements. That’s just a little over half of the qualifications! So many things can be learned on the job! However, if you’re looking for your first job, stick to applying to jobs with “coordinator,” “assistant,” or “associate” in them. Unless you’ve had a lot of leadership or management roles during internships or running your own business, you probably don’t have enough experience to be a manager or director at a company straight out of college. 6
2019 ADVERTISING INDUSTRY CHEAT SHEET
I made these charts for myself when I was starting my job search just to figure out which agencies are under which parent companies. There are thousands of advertising agencies and media companies around the country and the world, but I’ve just included the bigger ones I’ve heard of. I don’t know if all of them have internship programs, but a lot of them do, so check out their websites for more information.
WPP
AKQA Geometry Global Grey GroupM Hogarth Worldwide J. Walter Thompson MediaCom Mindshare Mirum Ogilvy VML Wavemaker Wunderman Y&R
Publicis Groupe
BBH Digitas Leo Burnett Worldwide MSL Group Nurun Performics Rokkan Saatchi&Saatchi SapientRazorfish Spark Foundry Starcom Zenith
Interpublic Group (IPG)
Omnicom Group
Acxiom The Axis Agency Big Family Table BPN The Brooklyn Brothers Casanova//McCann Current Deutsch dna Communications Elephant Film Fashion Genuine GOLIN Huge Hustle ID Media Initiative IPG Mediabrands The Martin Agency McCann Worldgroup Momentum Wordwide Mosaic Group New Honor Society Octagon Orion Worldwide PMK BNC R/GA Rogers & Cowan UM Vowel
adam&eve BBDO BrandScience DDB Worldwide Fleishman Hilliard Fuse BBDO Goodby, Silverstein & Partners GSD&M Hearts&Science Instinct Interbrand Ketchum Media Wise OMD PHD Siegel+Gale TBWA\Chiat Day The Ant Farm
MDC Partners
6 Degrees 72andSunny Allison + Partners Anomaly Assembly Crispin Porter + Bogusky Doner Hello Design Red Scout 7
Miscellaneous:
180LA 360i Allied Global Marketing AMP Agency Amusement Park Ayzenberg Big Picture Entertainment BLT Communications David&Goliath Droga5 Edelman Firstborn Giant Spoon Haymaker Horizon Media INNOCEAN USA Kiosk Laundry Service mOcean Omelet Possible RPA Sensis The Mill Think Jam VaynerMedia Wasserman Wieden+Kennedy Wongdoody Zambezi
2019 ENTERTAINMENT AND MEDIA INDUSTRY CHEAT SHEET Disney
ABC ESPN Freeform Lucasfilm Marvel Pixar Touchstone Pictures Fox 21st Century Fox Fox 2000 Fox Music Fox Searchlight Pictures FX Hulu National Geographic
Discovery, Inc Animal Planet TLC Food Network Travel Channel Eurosport Discovery Science
PMC
Deadline Hollywood Hollywood Life IndieWire Rolling Stone Variety
AT&T
DirecTV WarnerMedia Atlantic Records Castle Rock Entertainment DC Comics HBO New Line Cinema Village Road Show Pictures Warner Bros Warner Bros. Records Warner Music Warner/Chappell Music Otter Media Fullscreen Hello Sunshine Turner Broadcasting Adult Swim Bleacher Report Cartoon Network CNN TNT
Meredith Corporation Entertainment Weekly Food&Wine Fortune InStyle People Sports Illustrated Time Travel + Leisure
CBS Corporation CBS The CW Showtime Networks Viacom BET Comedy Central MTV Nickelodeon Paramount Pictures
Vivendi
Capitol Music Group Casablanca Records Daily Motion Geffen Records Havas Interscope Records Killer Tracks Republic Records Universal Music Group
Verizon Communications AOL Huffington Post Oath TechCrunch Tumblr Yahoo! 8
Comcast
CNBC Dreamworks E! Fandango Focus Features MSNBC NBC News NBCUniversal Universal Pictures USA Network Weather Channel A&E Networks A&E History Lifetime Viceland
Conde Nast Allure Glamour GQ Teen Vogue Vanity Fair Vogue
Miscellaneous
A24 Amazon Studios ATTN: Bleecker Street Buzzfeed
Sony Entertainment Columbia Pictures Crackle Sony Music Entertainment Sony Pictures Animation Sony PlayStation TriStar Pictures
Lionsgate
Lionsgate Films Pantelion Films Starz Summit Entertainment Creative Artists Agency Endemol Shine Group Facebook Watch Fremantle Media iHeartMedia Live Nation Magnolia Pictures MGM Netflix Pandora Participant Media Refinery29 Skydance Media Spotify Vice Media Vydia William Morris Endeavor YouTube
4. GET YOUR RESUME AND COVER LETTER TOGETHER
As far as design, readability is key! If you’re trying to be a graphic designer, you can be more creative, but for everyone else, make it straightforward. Space everything out evenly and make sure the color of your resume is easy to read. Keep your resume to one page and save your resume as a pdf, not a Microsoft Word document. Make it stand out with a fun, but legible font, a bold color or border, or logo. I got inspiration from Pinterest and designed my own in Adobe InDesign, but you can also buy custom templates from Etsy or make yours online on Canva. Make sure your name and contact information is easy to find on your resume. You just need your name, phone number, and email address. You can also put your LinkedIn profile and your portfolio website, but no need for your home address. If you’re a student, put your education at the top. Don’t forget to edit your resume and cover letters for spelling and grammar. If the job was in the past, the verbs should be in past tense. Don’t use personal pronouns like I, me, or we. When applying to 30 internships, I have made careless mistakes like putting the wrong company’s name, and that has probably cost me an interview or two. Have someone at your school’s career center or a trusted professor read your resume. I don’t always take their advice, but I think I’ve benefited from having a lot of people look at mine. Have three bullet points per job. Use action verbs, you can Google a list of good words to put on your resume. I need to work on this, but it’s good to show what you did and what the results were. The more numbers you can use (led to a 10% increase, managed a budget of $2,000, emailed 150 members every week), the better. Employers want to know that you will add value to their company. List your positions, starting with your most current job at the top. You don’t need an objective statement, your GPA, or references on your resume, as those just take up space. Companies will ask for references if they want them. Tailor your resume for the job. This may mean making multiple versions of your resume. If you’re applying for different kinds of jobs like graphic design and social media, you’re going to want to highlight different tasks. Read the job description and try to show that you have experience doing what the company is asking for. I’ve even made different resumes and cover letters for different jobs within marketing, whether it’s social media, marketing, communications, public relations, digital marketing, or branding. Make your resume easy for machines to read. I didn’t realize the importance of this until the second half of my junior year. If you’re applying to large companies with hundreds of internship applicants, you will apply through an online service like Workday or Randstad, which means a computer will scan your resume for keywords that are usually taken from the job description. Don’t go crazy, but look for repeated words in the description and add them to your resume if you don’t already have them. Cover letters can be tricky. Honestly, I still don’t know if my cover letter is the right format. As I applied to more internships and met more people, I realized the size of the USC and UCLA alumni networks and decided that I won’t ever have the access to those alumni, but I can look at their career centers. I found that the USC career center website has some great digital resources, so I used their cover letter template to write mine. I have a brief intro, a few paragraphs explaining what I did and what I learned from my most recent internship experiences, and a brief closing abut why I want the job. I have dozens of cover letters on my computer that I will tweak for each internship I apply to. If your major and prior experience has nothing to do with the job you’re applying for, use your cover letter to explain why you’re looking to make a transition and how your current skills will transfer well to the new industry/position. If there’s an option to add a cover letter, you should probably add one. It just shows the employer that you care about this job. 9
I like to look at other peoples’ resumes if they have them attached to their LinkedIn profiles or on their portfolio website. I’ve realized that there’s no single right way to make your resume and cover letter. I’ve included the evolution of my resume on the next few pages to show how it has changed in the past few years. Freshman year, I used Microsoft Word, but quickly switched to Adobe InDesign because I had already learned how to use it junior year of high school and so I could have complete control over how I wanted my resume designed. March 2016
August 2016
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The career center told me I should get rid of my photo, which seems pretty obvious now. By the time I got back from studying abroad in fall 2016, I had a lot more experience to put on my resume. Fall of junior year, I re-designed again, changed fonts, and added my LinkedIn profile. I also bought my own domain name and created a new website to match my resume. I uploaded my college projects online and removed the projects section from my resume. April 2017
November 2017
11
In spring 2018, I applied to a ton of internships and wasn’t getting any responses, so in a panic, I called my mentor, who reviewed my resume and said to remove icons because machines can’t read them. I also deleted my objective statement, put leadership experience under general experience, and typed out the names of programs. After completing five internships, I was able to take out school positions, move my education to the bottom, link my online profiles in the pdf, and add my location and a certifications section. April 2018
December 2018
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5. apply, APPLY, APPLY
I made an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all of the internships I’ve even considered applying to, and I keep adding pages to every application season. The columns are labeled: company, position, application deadline, date applied, next step, and link to the application.
Every time I apply to a job, I save the job description just in case I get offered an interview but forgot what the job requirements are and the link to the application is no longer active. I After receiving the automated “thank you for applying” email, I copy and paste the job description and email it to myself so the description is attached to the job, and I can easily search for it in my emails. If the application requires a letter of recommendation, let the recommender know at least two weeks in advance. Send them the internship job description, your resume, and cover letter, so that they can speak to all of your work and accomplishments. In my experience, the more roles you apply to, the higher the chances you are hired. Of course, make sure they’re positions you’d actually want. In LA, people from around the country will come to the city just to intern, so it is super competitive to get an internship. Most summers, I applied to 40-60 companies, got interviews for 5-10, and got offers from 1 or 2. Spring and fall internships were less competitive, so I probably applied to 15. If I had only applied to 10, I probably wouldn’t have gotten any internships. I’ve talked with some college graduates who have recently started their first jobs, and most of them said they had to apply to 50-100 jobs, so just keep applying!
6. interview and post-interview
I’ve done several different types of interviews. Some companies use a screening website where you aren’t talking to a person. You will be asked a question, have about two minutes to prepare an answer, then send in a timed video response. I had to do this for NBCUniversal, Horizon Media, and Single Grain. I’ve also done phone screens with recruiters or HR managers who just ask about your experience and tell you more about the logistics of the role. Not all companies will make you do a phone screen, they may just have a phone interview with a member of the team that is hiring. I’ve also done video interviews via Skype, Google Hangout, Highfive, or Zoom, as well as in-person interviews. Before you do any type of interview, research the company thoroughly. Know what the company does, who its clients are, and current company news. Go through the company website so you’re familiar with everything and just Google the company to find the latest headlines. Try to find people on the team you’d be working on through LinkedIn and read about what they do. Research the position and start to do some of the tasks if possible. For example, if it’s a social media position that involves competitive research, start researching the the company and its 13
competitors and share what works well and what doesn’t with your interviewer, it really shows you’re going the extra mile. It took me an hour of preparation, but doing this is 100% what got me the internship at Fox, as I was offered the position the same day. You should know the company, but don’t forget to know yourself. Be able to explain your resume without directly reading off of it. The first thing you will be asked is “tell me about yourself and your experiences.” Be prepared to talk about your projects and work that you did at the positions on your resume. I’ve been asked to talk about a time when I “had to manage your time” or “struggled with something and how you overcame it” so many times, I already have my answers ready to go. Practice these 31 frequently asked interview questions from themuse.com. After you’ve talked about yourself and they have explained the position, you move onto the question round. Have at least three questions prepared, it shows that you are interested in the company and the role. Examples: Who do I report to? What is the company culture like? What are some qualities of people who succeed here? What is your favorite part about working at the company? For your own peace of mind, ask what the expected timeline is for the rest of the application process is. For a phone interview, make sure you’re in a quiet place with good service. For any video or in-person interview, dress for success. Even if you know it’s a relaxed office, it just shows you’re professional and serious about the job. I think I have been wearing the same black dress, blazer, and boots for every interview for the past year. If you’re going into the office in person, give yourself an extra 10 minutes to figure out parking and get yourself to the lobby. Bring extra copies of your resume and shake your interviewer’s hand when you meet them. If you don’t have someone’s email address, feel free to ask for it or get their business card so you can send them a thank you email. Your thank you email doesn’t have to be very long, but it should be unique to the person that you talked to. Say thank you for their time and reference something you talked about (this is why it’s good to ask a lot of questions). Send the email the same day of your interview.
7. ACCEPT/DECLINE OFFERS
It’s okay to ask for a couple of days to evaluate an offer, but as a courtesy to the company, try to accept or decline your offer quickly. If you’re waiting to hear back from another company, email them immediately and ask if they’ve made their decision. If you’d rather work there, make that evident and say that you’ve received an offer somewhere else, but you really want to work at their company. In any case, be sure of what you want, because once you accept or decline an offer, there’s no going back. It is okay to decline an offer, people do it all the time, so don’t feel guilty about it. You want to have a good experience. In my opinion, if you’re going to do an internship, you need to be able to commit your time to the company. They should tell you the amount of hours and days they expect you to be there, but if they don’t, you should definitely ask. When you’re working, you can’t just go on a month-long vacation in the middle of the summer. If you know you’re going to be out of town for a period of time (preferably a week or less), make sure you let your internship manager know at the beginning of the internship and make sure to remind them about it. You should make the most of the internship and want to be there the full-time anyway. If you hate your internship, talk to HR and see if they can switch your manager or make adjustments. I once read somewhere that you should get to the office before your boss and leave after them. Because of my hour limitations and schedule, I didn’t do this all the time, but the point is to show up. People probably won’t notice if you’re early, but they’ll notice if you’re late. 14
EXTRA RESOURCES
I haven’t used all of these yet, but other people have recommended them. Website building: Adobe Portfolio, Wix, Squarespace, WordPress Resume design: Adobe InDesign, Canva, Etsy, Kick Resume, Adobe Spark Networking: LinkedIn Advertising books: http://bbh-labs.com/the-world-cup-of-advertising-books/ Business cards: Vistaprint, Moo, Overnight Prints, Zazzle Certification courses: Google Academy for Ads, Twitter Flight School, Facebook Blueprint, Microsoft Office, Adobe Digital Learning Services, YouTube Certified, Hubspot Academy, Bing Ads Accreditation, Hootsuite Academy Online tutorials: Lynda.com (free membership through some universities and public library systems)
THANK YOU
Applying to internships can be frustrating and a lot of work, but just keep going! If you have connections, reach out to them! I didn’t know anyone in the advertising or entertainment industry when I started out, but I do now. Unfortunately, they haven’t directly led to any jobs, but I certainly have learned a lot from them and have taken their advice. Thank you for reading! I hope this will help you in your internship/job hunt! You can do this!
CONTACT
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at lauraclaypoolphoto@gmail.com or dm me on Instagram @lauraclaypool_photo.
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