Finding a Summer Internship Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

Wall Street Journal:

Adapt

I’m a lucky one. My summer internship in finance is still set to begin in May, though that could change suddenly. Still, others aren’t so fortunate. Take the typical college junior. Maybe he didn’t get his act together to find an internship last summer, after his sophomore year. But there was no rush—he still had this summer, one more shot at some experience in, say, the corporate world. Now that chance is likely gone. Come fall, he and many like him will be seniors. They’ll apply for full-time positions without any job experience in their fields.

These students must ask how they nonetheless can make this summer productive and differentiate themselves from their peers. The key is to realize that for employers, an internship listed on a résumé is only a proxy for relevant experience. But this can take many forms. Instead of “gaining coding experience” at a software-engineering internship, you can program websites of your own. Instead of “working in a collaborative environment” in an office job all summer, you can work with others to manage the clients of your lawn-cutting business.

This summer will be unconventional. It just might show prospective employers more about you than an internship ever would.

—Cal Nagusky, The Ohio State University, finance