Here’s how to intern in the COVID-19 era

Students can find relevant work-from-home internships through online portals.

Businesses, schools, working professionals, and all societal and economic aspects have been affected due to COVID-19. Like other fields, the education sector is dynamically adapting to the situations dictated by the pandemic.

The months from April to July are traditionally called the internship season for the student community. However, due to COVID-19, a lot of companies aren’t able to hire the summer interns or onboard the hired ones. Some companies had to either postpone or cancel their summer internship programmes due to the outbreak while many have decided to turn their internship into virtual internship opportunities. Many tech giants too have turned their summer internships into virtual internship programmes.

Now, the immediate question which arises is how do students navigate through these opportunities and find the best opening.

There are two major scenarios for aspiring interns right now:

Secured summer internships but not able to join: Many students lost their internship opportunities as many of the companies cancelled their internship programmes. These are testing times and they will have to adapt their strategies as per the current situation. The students faced with this situation should try to speak with their recruiter and understand if the internship could be turned into a virtual working opportunity. They should make their case in front of the employer as to how their internships can be altered into virtual opportunities and state their competence to work virtually.

If this isn’t possible for any reason, these candidates also involuntarily fall into the second category.

Planned to pursue internships in the summer season: On the one hand, where businesses are not hiring and onboarding new interns right now, many businesses have switched to remote working. They are now hiring and mentoring their interns virtually. Now, it can be extremely difficult for the students to keep a track of all the organisations which are hiring currently. Here, the best bet they have is by finding internships through online portals where they can conveniently find relevant work-from-home internships and apply to them.

Some of the popular work-from-home internship profiles available for students from various backgrounds are as follows:

Engineering students: Available internship profiles include web development, programming, machine learning, data science, data analytics, and Python development.

Degree (BSc, BA, Bcom) students: Available internship profiles include content writing, social media marketing, teaching, business development, marketing, and operations.

Management students: Popular internship profiles include business development, marketing, digital marketing, human resources, operations, and finance.

Another important thing to understand is that with the continuously changing circumstances in the COVID-19 era, the competition to grab the best of internships has also increased exponentially. This makes it extremely necessary for the candidates to work harder on their internship applications and make their candidature stand out.

Here are a few things they could do for the same:

Customisation: Customising resume and application according to the organisation and internship is advisable while applying to internships and jobs irrespective of any situation. A customised resume and application represent the sincerity and job fitness of the aspiring candidate. A student can customise his or her application by highlighting relevant skills, experience, and suitability to a chosen profile.

Competence to work virtually: To work remotely, one must possess skills like high ownership and adaptability. In addition to this, they must have a good sense of time management. The candidate must highlight these skills with relevant examples to establish their competence for the virtual internship. In addition to this, they must also cite an example of hard work from their previous internship, a college project, or participation in any competition or event.

Relevant tools: In order to navigate a work-from-home internship, it is necessary that a candidate is well acquainted with tools like Trello, Teamwork, Google Drive, Dropbox, Skype, Google Hangouts Meet, Slack, Team Viewer, and Zoom. These tools help one in managing their work and coordinate with the team.

Finally, make the best use of your time, resources and skills to perform well in these virtual internship programmes.

(The author is founder and CEO of Internshala)