The interns are here!
Our office has been without an intern for a semester, but with my promotion a couple months ago we’ve been in dire need of one since early November. However, I had absolutely no clue where to start when hiring an intern - a strange feeling, being that I myself have been an intern dozens of times before!
Suddenly, I found myself on the other side of the table asking myself serious questions like “What kind of qualities do you need in an intern?” and “How do you politely ask ‘Hey - can you go on another Starbucks run?’ ”
Posting on facebook brought a lot of well meaning but essentially helpless advice. “Someone hard working” “Willing to do anything” “Someone dedicated.” Like I said - all great suggestions. But lets face it - every resume and cover letter looks alike. Everyone wants you to know that they are “hardworking, dedicated and intelligent.” Everyone wants to impress you with the laundry list of student films they worked on.
Like I said - Everyone is the same.
But ultimately, personality is what I want. You’re an intern - I’m not planning on handing you any monumental tasks that will require the height of your film school knowledge. I’m going to ask you to file. So as long as you can promise me that you’ll show up on time and not complain, I get the whole hard working picture - now tell me something else. If I’m going to be sitting across the office from you 16-hours a week, I want to know you have something interesting to offer.
So, in the hopes of saving numerous assistants from enduring the same resume monotony that I went through, here’s my list of things to do (and not to do) on your Internship Resume:
- Tell me what makes you unique! Did you just self - finance your own short film? Or are you fresh off finishing the LA marathon? Maybe you just got back from feeding orphans in Africa? Tell me something that makes you different from the rest - and what you’ve learned from it to bring to our team. It shows you have personality and gives me something to remember you by - 10 resumes later I’ll probably still remember the marathon guy vs. the guy with that one GPA.
- Tell me what you know about my company I specifically work in a company focusing in a very niche market - not just anyone can do what we do, so I hired my interns with those questions in mind. But it works the same with any company - tell them that you’d like to intern with the company that produced movies XY and Z or managed star AB and C. It shows we’re not just another name on the list.
- Tell me what you want to do at my company You’re an intern. No matter what you’re going to make coffee and copies. However when the occasion arises, some interns get to do some pretty cool stuff. But if you’re an editor who suddenly ends up doing research for The Boss’ new screenplay, it doesn’t seem as cool. Even if you probably won’t get to edit our next brilliant commercial, it never hurts to say “I’m a pro at coffee and copies - but what I really like to do is cut!”
- Ditch the “I ams” I get it. All the soon to be college grads want their employers to know that their dedicated and smart and bla bla bla. Let me repeat: ALL. Those words start to become pretty pointless when they’re on every resume you see. Tell me the WHYs or HOWs behind those adjectives (see tip #1) or else skip the “I ams” completely
- Give me your contact info! I realize these are the days of emailed resumes. Thank You technology! However, don’t forget to leave your contact info on both your resume and your cover letter. Yes, I realize you emailed me from your email address - so I should already have it. But chances are, I’m printing out your cover letter & resume and then dropping the email into some deep dark folder with only the hope of “search” to bring it back to life. So give me your contact info up front - and you’re already making life much easier for me.
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