This blog is written by Ellie, our Campus Ambassador for Iowa State University. She is a junior majoring in Agricultural Studies with minors in Advertising and Animal Science.

Writing a cover letter can be a stressful task looming about while applying for an internship.  It is hard to accurately depict your talents and apply them to the internship you’re applying for. Here are some helpful tips on how to catch the attention of the company and land that perfect internship.

1:  Keeping in mind the company’s mission statement, as well as key words the company uses to describe their employees is important to show that you know the companies values and ideals.

2: Typically, cover letters are only three to four paragraphs long. The first paragraph should be an introduction of yourself, why you would like to intern for them, and then how you heard about this opening. The next paragraph should be a brief background of your experience and knowledge that are applicable to the internship. Also, what skills that you have that would help you be the best intern for their company; in this paragraph, utilize those key words from the company’s website. The last paragraph should entail how you are open to the opportunity to meet and how you appreciate the chance to further discuss your qualifications and skills. Thank them for their time and you’re done! Simple as that.

3: Always send your cover letter as a PDF. It is easier for them to access the file, and it will not get distorted.  Also, entitle it as your name, then cover letter, for example, John Doe Cover Letter. It will make the job a lot easier for the person sorting applications.

4: Usually, applying for an internship includes sending email enclosed with a resume and cover letter. In the body of the email, introduce yourself and what internship you are applying for. Also, ask if they need any writing samples and provide them with your personal blog, or social media pages your write content for.

5: Always take the time to review your cover letters and make sure that it explains how your skills relate to the criteria listed in the job posting.

It can be time consuming to write a custom cover letter for each job you apply for, but it’s important to take the time and effort to show the company why you are a good match. Best of luck, interns!

This blog is written by Ariam, our campus ambassador from Stony Brook University.

Not everyone is over joyous about resumes on white paper anymore. It wasn’t until winter break that I realized I might be one of many college students who still submit paper copies of resumes. Why is that? In the age of tweeting, chatting, and texting while crossing the street there are many new ways to present your resume to employers.

1. Digital Resume

Consider submitting a resume through an online website that offers great templates and url links at your disposal. Not only is it easily accessible to just about anyone, but you are given the opportunity to create your own page and upload stories and videos. Essentially it serves as an online portfolio. Some free sites include about.me, and visualize.me. Feel free to include the page link on any of your social media pages, and your business card.

2. Add Color

It shouldn’t come as no surprise that students are starting to add color to their resume. For so long we’ve seen resumes printed on white or off-white paper (very 2005!) This is a great way to help your resume stand out from a stack of white paper. As long as you adhere to the old-fashion layout of spacing between sections, using the same font and leaving a comfortable margin on the sides, top and bottom of the page—I don’t see why you shouldn’t try it.

3. Got a Poster Board?

According to USA Today College, doing something out of the ordinary like printing your resume on a poster or a banner definitely shows creativity and that edge factor that a lot of companies like to see in prospective employers. You might be wondering, which mailbox is big enough to hold a poster board?! Well, you already being on-campus (at a career fair) is a great place to try this presentation. This is definitely one way to literally knock your competition’s resume out of the stack!

4. Video

Uploading a video is probably ideal for a landing a position with a Communications and Media company. Think about it. Up until this year, the Intern Queen blog accepted vlogs and written posts from campus ambassadors around the country (don’t know why this isn’t the case anymore.) The benefit here is that employers can see how you present yourself, and foretaste your personality. Like your 30-second elevator pitch, this is another edge that employers want to see. Ask yourself: What do they want to know about me and what I can offer?

This blog is written by Amanda, our Campus Ambassador at Providence College. She is studying English and Business and will graduate May 2013.

On a recent episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York, Kourtney Kardashian has an obsession with couponing. She believes she is doing a great thing by spending hours upon hours collecting and organizing coupons in order to save money. However, her friends and family realize that the amount of money she is spending is nothing compared to the amount of time she has to put in—not to mention she has no use for the items she is purchasing.

Whether or not you’re a fan of the Kardashian craze, you can learn a crucial time management lesson from this: too much of a good thing can quickly turn into a bad thing. Using coupons can be a great way for a broke college student to save some money, but if the time you spend collecting coupons cuts into your time for schoolwork or other activities, you have a problem.

Extreme couponing is definitely an extreme example, but I know there are plenty of other ways that trying to save time or money can become wasteful. Don’t spend hours planning out your week in fifteen-minute increments if you know you are not going to be able to keep to such a schedule. Buying food or toiletries on campus can be more expensive than spending time cooking or going shopping elsewhere, but allow yourself to use the convenience of on-campus options when you’re crunched for time. There is a big difference between being lazy and using your time and money wisely—don’t always opt for the easiest option, but don’t push yourself when you are already busy and stressed. Making the most of your resources should always involve balance.

Heather  attends the University of Notre Dame in Indiana where she is double majoring in Business Management and Psychology. She has been lucky enough to intern at her school’s Alumni Association doing graphic design and for the Intern Queen herself!

Ok, so that is probably not what you want to call your personal website. But maybe I am getting ahead of myself. What even is a personal website? And why do YOU need one?

Making a personal website was my New Year’s resolution. I have actually started two. One is my professional site that includes my qualifications, skills, and design/art portfolio. That is the type of site we will be discussing in this article. The other is my more creative site that is not linked with my professional name.  That site includes my blog, favorite recipes, a link to my Facebook, and an online shop where you can buy the things I make. It was important to me to keep my personal and professional identities separate and these two sites are geared to entirely different people. That is something to keep in mind as you create your site. Of course, if you want access to my sites – please let me know!

What is it?

A personal website is an opportunity for you to organize and display all of your skills and experience. Think of it as an extended resume. All the stuff that you couldn’t fit on one page can easily be navigated to within your website. There should be a spot where you can write a little about yourself, a page for a printable paper version of your resume, and so on. Possible pages to include in your website might be: awards/recognition, skills, work experience, volunteerism, contact information,  etc. The headings you would put on your resume are a good place to start and you can build from there. Do you dabble in photography? Add a portfolio page where you can display your best work. Are you looking for a job as a writer? Add some samples of your writing or include a blog component. What you include in your site is entirely up to you.

Why Should You Make One?

• A personal website is increasingly necessary in our digital world. A website is where a potential employer can go to find all of your information in one spot.
• You can have a link to your Twitter and Facebook (provided those are professional enough for an employer to see) as well as to your LinkedIn profile.
• They also allow you to expand upon your resume. If you have too many jobs or extracurriculars to list on one page, a website is a great place to put them!  You can go into much more detail about your accomplishments, (ex: duties and outstanding achievements in your last internship) than you can on paper.
• You can personalize it! While paper resumes are supposed to be black ink on white/cream paper, your website can be whatever you want! Show your fun personality! Don’t get too crazy and just have animated kittens everywhere – remember this should still look professional. But it is perfectly acceptable to add some floral flourishes or some pops of color!
• Best of all, it is just plain impressive! To be a young professional with your own website shows that you are on the cutting edge of technology and you are a go-getter who is taking advantage of new venues and opportunities. A good-looking website can easily push you above someone who only has a plain paper resume.
• If you want to create your own company, a website is a must. Most web-hosting includes email addresses, which looks much more professional than getting an email from someone at a yahoo.com address.

Okay, Heather, you convinced me. How do I make my own website?

You’re going to have to do a little research. First, check to see if your domain name is free. Make sure it is professional and easy to remember. Often, your name will be available, and that is probably the best domain name to have. For example, JohnDoe.com would be great…if your name is John Doe. At some colleges, you have a webpage linked to your email (Google Sites, for example) where you can create your webpage for free. Otherwise, you will have to find a web hosting service. GoDaddy.com, iPage.com, and fatcow.com are just a few that are cheap and secure. You can search “web hosting providers” for more options. Then you have to create the actual site. If you’re a pro at web coding – create your own from scratch! If you’re like me, you need some help. You could hire someone to make it, but that is expensive. Many hosting providers will provide templates so that you can do this yourself with no HTML , CSS, or JAVA coding skills required. Make sure to check that out before you decide which host to go with. The iLife program included on Mac computers also provides a web creation software called iWeb that is easy to use. Not sure what you want it to look like? Search “Best Personal Online Portfolio Sites” or something similar for inspiration.

So, how do I get employers to look at my site?

Obviously, include your site URL on your resume header under your home address. Mention it in your cover letter. You should already have an email signature. (If you don’t, get one!) Include the URL to your site in that signature. Tweet your site and add the URL to your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. If you have business cards (another thing I suggest!) add the URL on that, or add a QR code. People can scan the QR code with their phones and be taken directly to your site.

I hope that you are all interested in taking on an extra project for yourselves this year. Creating a website is quite an undertaking, but it is well worth it! Happy Designing, Everyone!

A former unpaid intern for the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, accusing its parent company, the Hearst Corporation, of violating federal and state wage and hour laws by not paying her even though she often worked there full time.

In her lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the intern, Xuedan Wang, and her law firm are asking to make the case a class action on behalf of what they say are hundreds of unpaid interns at Heart Magazines, which also publishes Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and Good Housekeeping.

Employment experts say a growing number of young people, hundreds of thousands of them, do unpaid internships each year as they seek to get a foot in the door and gain work experience. But some interns and labor advocates assert that many employers are taking advantage of these interns — and violating Labor Department rules in the process — by using the interns essentially to do the jobs of other workers and not providing a bona fide educational experience.

The lawsuit against Hearst states, “Employers’ failure to compensate interns for their work, and the prevalence of the practice nationwide, curtails opportunities for employment, fosters class divisions between those who can afford to work for no wage and those who cannot, and indirectly contributes to rising unemployment.”

According to the lawsuit, Ms. Wang, who graduated from Ohio State University in 2010, was an intern at Harper’s Bazaar from August 2011 to December 2011 and said she generally worked 40 hours a week but sometimes as many as 55 hours. Her lawyers said that Ms. Wang, with a degree in strategic communications, coordinated pickups and deliveries of fashion samples between Harper’s Bazaar and fashion vendors and showrooms and assigned other unpaid interns to help carry out the pickups and deliveries.

She also helped maintain records on the fashion samples and process reimbursement requests for corporate expense reports.

“Unpaid interns are becoming the modern-day equivalent of entry-level employees, except that employers are not paying them for the many hours they work,” said Adam Klein, one of the lawyers for Ms. Wang. “The practice of classifying employees as ‘interns’ to avoid paying wages runs afoul of federal and state wage and hour laws.”

Hearst, like many other media companies, does not pay its interns, but officials say it arranges for them to receive academic credit through their college or university. Hearst officials said that this arrangement is made clear to prospective interns in advance.

A spokesman, Paul Luthringer, said: “We have not been served with any such lawsuit and thus cannot comment at this time.”

The lawsuit pointed to guidelines from the United States Labor Department,which state that unpaid internships are only lawful in the context of an educational training program, when the interns do not displace regular employees and the employer derives no immediate advantage from the intern’s work. The guidelines also state another criterion for internships to be unpaid: “the internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.”

Ms. Wang’s lawyers said that by treating her and others as interns rather than regular employees, they were denied not only wages, but also Social Security contributions and the right to receive unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation.

Last September, Mr. Klein’s Manhattan-based law firm, Outten & Golden, filed a lawsuit against Fox Searchlight Pictures, accusing it of violating wage laws by using unpaid interns to work on “Black Swan” and other films. Fox Searchlight has denied any wrongdoing.

Article from The New York Times blog written by Steven Greenhouse.

This blog is written by Korrie, our campus ambassador from SUNY Cortland. She majors in Communication with a concentration in Public Relations and will be graduating in May 2012.

There are so many different ways to earn some extra cash while in school. It is important that you find the right one that works with your schedule and you have fun doing. In my experience, these are the best jobs to have while in college. (not listed in any specific order) To make things easier, always make sure you have a resume and references in order when applying to any job!

1. On campus Alumni Affairs. For all four years in college, I worked in a call center for Alumni Affairs and it was one of my favorite jobs. Talking to alumni is great networking, and a lot of them are very open to talk about their career and their time at your college. It’s one of the highest paying jobs on a lot of campuses and looks great on your resume.

2. Working at the Library. If you have a lot of work to do and spend most of your time there anyway, why not work there? Student library workers say they spend a lot of their time sitting at the front desk and late at night can getting their school work done while getting paid.

3. Tour Guide. Do you remember your tour guide when you were visiting your future colleges? If your upbeat and have a bubbly personality this is a great job. You already know your way around, so why not get paid to show others? You could end up being a major influence on people’s college decisions and it looks great on your resume.

4. Working at Career Services. You always first to know what is going on in the career world. You know when all of the workshops and career fairs are and I bet you will have the best looking resume out of all your friends.

5. Working for Yourself. Use your skills and be inventive. Make a list of everything you can do and what skills you have and then see how you can turn that into money. A lot of businesses will pay big money for logo design, making advertisements, recruiting customers, website building or people to update their social media accounts.

6. The Gym. Working at the gym is a great incentive to get to the gym. It’s also a high energy place with lots of endorphins in the air. A friend of mine teaches a yoga class and the pay is great. Classes are free on most campuses and after a while of taking a certain one, you can qualify to be an instructor. Get paid to be healthy and do what you love.

7. Babysitter or Afterschool Child Care Provider. If you check with your University career center, they usually have listings for local babysitting jobs or for afterschool child care centers. It is a great way to earn some extra cash and get good references. A few of my friends babysit for their professors and the pay is great and they built a long lasting relationship with that professor.

8. Lifeguarding. A lifeguarding license is always something good to have. Check with the campus pool or the local YWCA for open lifeguarding positions. Most pay between $9.00-$12.00 an hour and it’s not exhausting work.

9. Tutoring. If you got a really good grade in a challenging class you can sign up to be a tutor the next semester. The pay is really good and you set your own hours.

10. Coaching, Refereeing, Sport Instructor. One semester my friend and I replied to a listing to be an after school cheerleading coach at the local middle school. We had so much fun and really got to know all of the girls on the team. Other people we knew got paid to referee the football games on Saturday mornings and really enjoyed it. My college is right near a ski resort, a lot of students are ski instructors, snow board instructors, or cater the events.

This is a post by our campus ambassador Caitlin Pfaff from Florida State University.

Have you ever fantasized about your future job? Where you would be living? What title you would have?

Exploring the endless possibilities of the future on websites like Monster.com could lead to some beneficial insights.  First of all, if you’re not picky about what city you would like to live in, you can discover what regions of the country would be great for your career.  When I was looking for jobs in the Marketing/Public Relations area, I was surprised to find that there were many cities in Texas hiring for this profession.

Searching online for jobs also has given me a greater insight into what employers are looking for in a potential employee.  Many companies are looking for experience.  Sometimes when you don’t have years in the profession working in your favor, internships and campus involvement can help make you marketable for a job that you may not have certain qualifications.

Seeing what characteristics employers are looking for are helpful for interviews and knowing what skills to further develop.  I noticed that organization, customer service oriented, and creativity were all overlapping traits that employers are looking for.  I’ve been taking my experiences as an opportunity to develop these skills.

What have Internet Job Search Engines done for you?