Students should be persistent in contacting companies and take advantage of contacts and forums to land an internship, said members of the BYU–Hawaii Management Society at an internship workshop.
Nicky Lin, a graduate from Taiwan who studied psychology, is an employee at Career services. She suggested several ways to get an internship.
- Find a company you would like to work for and contact them about opportunities.
- Go to the school website. There you can look up past internships that students have done. You can ask to see if there are similar internship opportunities available currently.
- Look online at various websites like internship.com
Lin also helps students get money to do their internships. She described how the Yamagata family provides “generous amounts of funding” for BYUH students to help them get internships. These funds are only available for students doing international internships and go towards assisting with airfare, lodging, and ground transportation. If they are IWORK students, they get an additional $10 per week for meals.
Kazuyuki Kameya, a senior in accounting from Japan, found his internship with the firm Ernst & Young LLP through the Boston Career forum, which has been the standard in Japanese-English bilingual recruitment, according to careerforum.net. He got this internship after submitting his resume. He used his connections to contact a manager and a partner of the law firm, asking them questions.
Throughout his search for an internship, Kameya had 18 interviews with six companies. Out of those interviews, he received two offers. He described the process of preparing to work before interning at Ernst & Young. “I was able to have some ideas of what I was going to face after connecting with alumni from this company.”
While working there, he was trained on the auditing processes and analytical procedures. Of his experience, he stated, “the application was very interesting when you could see how it works in the field, compared to learning concepts in a classroom.”
Taylor Smith, a senior from Utah double majoring in hospitality and tourism and business management, talked about his experience as an intern with the Disney Program. Smith worked in the merchandise area, and he described how interns can get an internship in whatever area they are most interested in. “The networking opportunity was one of the great benefits of working here,” he explained.
After the conclusion of his internship, Smith had one day of unemployment before he was hired as a full time employee at Disney. “The reason I was considered to go full time was because I had a clean record with a lot more experience than most other workers,” explained Smith. He continued, “I was never late, and I never missed a day.”