How to Find Roles

Giveaway: We’ve Built You This Free Internship Tracker

Chegg

Updated: September 9, 2020

(AKA less time and more applications FTW!)

You’ve heard the advice: Apply early and apply often. Check out new internship opportunities every day. Diversify your search. But besides all that, what’s the best thing you can do right now to get yourself to make real progress towards your internship goals?

Get organized.

Yep, that’s what an organized internship search looks like. Taking five minutes to jot down the details of every internship you spy, apply to, or follow up on is the best thing you can do for your future career. It will save you endless hours of frustration when you’re neck-deep in internship applications and desperately rooting through your browser history to prep for your next phone interview.

To get your internship search off on the right foot, we’ve put together a simple tracker. Fill it out to keep track of:

The internship basics: company name, position title, location, dates, and whether it’s part-time/full-time and paid/unpaid.
When and where you came across the internship opportunity.
How you’ve prioritized the opportunity, based your interests. Note: In the included examples, we’ve assigned each internship a numerical value. You could also go with “high,” “medium,” and “low.”
Whether or not you need to include a cover letter with the application.
When the application is due and whether you’ve heard back.
Which version of your resume and cover letter you submitted.
Any action(s) you still need to take: apply, send a follow-up email, prep for interview, reach out to Employee X on LinkedIn, etc.
Final status: Is the opportunity still open or closed?

Pretty useful, isn’t it?

Well, what are you waiting for? Download the internship tracker here.

Once you open the link, click File > Download as to save a copy to your desktop.

If you update the internship tracker every day, you’ll have a system in place to prioritize your internship applications—and to ensure every application makes it to the hiring manager’s inbox before the deadline. Feel free to color-code your updates or filter everything by date. Whatever you do, make it your own and make it work for you. It’s time to get on track!