Being a student at Creative Business offers you the opportunity to do an internship for 20 weeks whether in The Netherlands or abroad. But in the end, it all comes down to the question: “Where to start searching for my dream internship?”. So, below we will look into some tips which should be of help to any student looking for an internship.

It goes without saying that Linkedin is one of the best platforms for searching for a job or internship, but also for advertising yourself. Now it is time to use the knowledge you have learned so far in Personal Branding and apply it. It’s important to have a strong and updated profile and to try to be as active on this platform as possible. Think of creating posts about the real-life cases you have worked on to prove your knowledge and professionalism, about what you enjoy in your studies, about courses or any other learnings you took from the university, a job, an internship or maybe even volunteering. Make sure you have a professional profile picture, a catchy headline that shows off your interests or skills, a description of yourself stating that you are looking for an internship and an updated job and school section. 

From having a cohesive LinkedIn profile, the process it’s quite simple, but can be done in different ways. It just depends on what strategy you prefer. You can start looking for specific internship positions via the search button with the help of filters such as location or research your favourite companies and see what kind of internship openings they have posted. Of course, there is always the good option of creating a post describing yourself and your search for your dream internship. Many times, lecturers or fellow students will share this post and help out. 

Your student years so far and the connections you’ve made should not go to waste. As a student, it’s important to use part-time jobs or volunteering to your advantage, to keep in contact and even meet up with your lecturers and to take advantage of any student associations or events happening on campus. You never know how you will find your job in the future. 

When you network and step out of your comfort zone, you also build your self-confidence and communication skills that will help you through your future career. So the more people you meet, the more you will grow as an individual personally and professionally. 

The Creative Business programme has LinkedIn groups for students or alumni. The group focused on internships is named: “Creative Business Internships” and it has proven to be very useful for many of the students in their search. Every day, lecturers or fellow students who have seen an internship role that fits the study programme share it in the group. 

Even if you eventually cannot find your internship from there, it is a good starting point to see what kind of offers are there available and which would fit our students. Many times, students who did their internship at a company and had a good experience, share active postings from that company.

Another option when searching for an internship is to directly check the website of the company you are interested in. Most of the companies post new openings on their website and then on LinkedIn or other similar platforms. Have a list of companies which you like, from the brands that inspire you to brands that you use in your everyday life. It doesn’t really matter because you can always choose to do your internship abroad, even though The Netherlands is a very entrepreneurial country which makes finding an internship quite easy. 

Did you always have that one brand you admire and wish to work for? Just imagine what an internship there would be like! It is not really a problem if they don’t have an opening at the moment, you can always send an open application with your CV and motivation for working for them. The more passion and personalization you put into your application, the better. Some companies have on their website a section where an application can be submitted, but if not, just a simple email would work. Every company likes to see some proactiveness from students.

We wish you lots of luck in your search and hopefully, you will find your dream internship sooner than you expected. For our students, let us know how you found your internship and help other students in search of their dream internship!