How to Cook Up a Last Minute Summer Internship

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If you cook, you know there are two ways to make a meal. You can scope out recipes, make a shopping list and hit the grocery store to create the perfect meal. Or you can just go home, look at what you have in the refrigerator and work from there. So what does this have to do with career advice for young professionals? Internships can be the same way.

Sure, some of you hit up the college career office and family connections around Christmas and laboriously and carefully located yourself a summer internship. But others were lackadaisical or unlucky and now find yourself already well into June and looking at an empty summer. But it doesn’t have to be that way, argues blog Working Kind. You can be like a last minute chef and cook yourself up an instant internship. How?

Search for successes. Look for organizations in your city that cannot keep up with demand. They are hot and they are in need of new staff. Professional, scientific and technical employers are the most likely to hire this year, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, and that includes marketing and engineering firms and laboratories. Drop out, drop in. Major companies choose their interns in February or March. So by June, a few have thought better of it �C or found something better. When they drop out, you could fill in, suggests Mark Oldman, Vault.com co-founder said.? So contact the internship coordinator now and offer to serve as the relief pitcher. Go face to face.? Visit a half dozen organizations in a business park and introduce yourself as their problem-solving. high-energy intern (or other words that make you sound very appealing). Go mainly to smaller or mid-size employers and you could stumble upon a job before they��ve posted it, according to Richard Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute? books. Get personal. Ask Dad and Aunt Sue or your neighbor whose yard you used to mow for work, or leads.? Family ties and personal connections were the No. 1 way this year��s college graduates expect to find jobs, according to a Monster.com survey. While you��re at it, find a family member or professional friend to send out your qualifications on Twitter��s Hire Friday or in a LinkedIn status or other posting. Follow in a new executive. When a new CEO or CIO joins an organization, they want to put their stamp on the organization �C and fast. So often they want their own team in place. If you time it right and write an excellent letter to that executive, you could come in as an executive assistant or intern to the chief. Vault��s Oldman told me about a similar strategy: Write a persuasive, personal letter to a half dozen senior executives offering to serve as their executive assistant / intern for the summer. Choose people in fields that interest you, then Google them. The letter must be customized to that person��s specific work and explain ��why you��re excited to work with them.�� Seek a one-month assignment. Maybe this won��t be a summer-long internship but it could be a vacation relief or maternity leave replacement slot.? Offer to work the midnight shift; the dirty, undesirable clean-up job; the runner or the person who fields calls and customers who walk in. And take the job with a smile �C and then come up with some ways to do it and something a little more meaningful too.