My Journey to Finding an Internship

Libby Mulligan

Finding internship experiences while still in college can be very difficult, but here at Furman there is a huge team of advisors, mentors, professors, and more that will help you through the process. The Furman Advantage consists of three main goals:

1. A personalized, four year pathway to graduation
2. High-impact, engaged learning experience through research, internships, and study away
3. A team of advisors and mentors to help you find your path
4. Leading institutes and centers to explore and tackle important issues.

The Furman Advantage is a four year pathway. First year: explore and discover. Second year: examine and decide. Third year: connect and refine. Fourth year: synthesize and initiate.

As you have probably figured out from the title, I am in my third year here at Furman and am in the process of looking for internships for this Summer and Fall 2021. Today I am going to take you through my timeline/process in doing so with the help of my advisors and the Malone Career Center.

Winter Break: Started brainstorming what kind of experience I was looking for for this Summer. I personally decided that I wanted a virtual internship. Where to start? On the Internships page on the Furman website they have online resources including “Furman’s Internship Database.” This is where I began my search. They have SO MANY internships in this database so it definitely takes time to narrow down your searches, but don’t stress about it.

Late January / early February: Set up a meeting with Dianne Iseminger, who is the Internship Program Director in the Internships and Research Office in the Trone Student Center. This meeting was a CRUCIAL part in my process. I went to the meeting with a small list of internships I had found and was interested in from the database. She went through that list with me and talked about potential alumni or current students involved with those places I could potentially connect with. Additionally, we took the time to go through my resume section by section to really network it to these potential experiences.

Current day: After applying to numerous internships for this summer, I am now waiting to hear back from them and going through interview processes. I have already done one interview with a company and am waiting back to hopefully here from more! Dianne and I have been emailing back and forth discussing helpful tips and tricks to virtual interviews.

Unfortunately, I am currently in the waiting stage of finding an internship, but that is OK! There are always more out their to continue to apply to!

Next step: Start researching for Fall 2021 Internships in basically the same way. The only difference is that for the fall, I am actually doing my internship through my Communication Studies major.

Let me know if you have any questions!