How To Find A Developer Internship (Part 2)

Continuing on from Part 1, where we explored how to assess our interests, how to find potential opportunities and how to craft your initial engagement message, it’s time to dive into Part 2. This issue is all about finding the right people to engage with, how to connect with them and how to position yourself as an intern candidate.

It’s important to keep in mind that the approach being outlined in this series is to help find opportunities to learn, not to badger or harass companies or individuals. Understand that everyone’s time is valuable, and not all companies are wanting or needing interns.

This approach is obviously also for finding opportunities that aren’t listed. If companies are advertising that they’re needing interns, then just follow their approach. The methods outlined in this issue might help you secure that internship, but this series is more targeted at exploring the potential opportunities that you could gain from just reaching out to companies and people.

Let’s dive in.

Finding The Right People

LinkedIn is perhaps the most powerful professional tool (even though it’s a platform) in the modern working world.

Millions of people use LinkedIn to connect with companies and people to find jobs, opportunities to learn, or just share their knowledge.

Using the list of companies that you identified in the previous issue, start finding each of them on LinkedIn. If a company isn’t on LinkedIn, then they aren’t very modern and are a bit behind the times, but that’s just my opinion.

Company profile pages will let you know which employees who work there are also on LinkedIn. This could be a good opportunity for you to find those individuals at the company.

A bonus tip is to look at how long those individuals have been working at the company. If the majority of the employees haven’t been there for very long, then it may not be the best place to work.

Connecting With People

I’d suggest sending a connection request to a couple of the people at the company. Look for individuals that are high-ranking developers or could be involved in the hiring process.

Make sure to send a message with your connection request. Make sure to not type a long message that’s begging for a job. Simply just add a one liner that says how you’re looking forward to connecting or are a fan of the work their company is doing and would love to connect.

Sending long messages in connection requests is often seen as spam to the receiver, so avoid being so direct. You want to build a connection (excuse the pun), before positioning yourself as an intern.

Position Yourself

If someone has accepted your connection request, LinkedIn will notify you.

Wait a day or so before sending a message, thanking them for accepting your connection request and that you’re looking forward to connecting further.

From here, it’s a game of cat-and-mouse if they respond. If they do, then it’s up to you to treat each conversation as a unique one. There is nothing more frustrating than someone who is clearly just copy-pasting messages. People will immediately turn away from that.

Treat each conversation on its own merit. Once you feel comfortable, mention that you’re looking for an internship and would love to know if their company has an internship programme in place.

This is the most effective way I’ve seen for developers to land some amazing internship opportunities at some pretty wonderful companies. It relies on being patient and genuine. That’s the key. Be honest and be yourself, because people see through the BS.

Now you may be wondering how to create a strong LinkedIn profile to help ensure that you stand out amongst the crowd. Stay tuned for Part 3.

See you again next week.

P.S. I’ve launched on Instagram, where I will be frequently sharing advice, videos, pieces from my podcast and much more. Go follow if you want to keep learning!

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