Listen to Laura talk about the summer internship processes for grad students in a range of industries.

Transcript:

Stephanie:

Hi there. You're listening to Gear Up Season 2, where we bring you the Duke Career Center's on career advisers and talk about a variety of summer internship experiences. My name's Stephanie. And today, we're talking to Laura, who advises graduate students on a range of industries.

Laura:

Sure. I am Laura Coutts. I am a graduate career advisor in the Career Center. And I work specifically with students in the arts, humanities, environment, policy, and divinity. I have a broad portfolio.

Stephanie:

That is a lot. So generally speaking and then within each of those areas, how early do you usually advise students to start looking for summer opportunities?

Laura:

Sure. I think it really depends on industry. I would say for those students who are interested in nonprofit, the smaller companies, really, you can look in the spring. But if you're looking more for larger organizations, finance, business, things like that, a lot of that hiring timeline is going to be in the fall. So that'll probably be September, October. The first few months of a school year, you would start looking for an internship that would start that next summer.

Stephanie:

And where do you usually draw on students to find those internships? Like what kind of resources are available to them?

Laura:

Yeah, a lot of that, again, depends on industry. So thinking about some of our environment students, there are some really great opportunities there. Stand back, which is also run through the Nicholas School. Thinking about some of our other students. A lot of the time, too. I'll talk to them about, you know, what are second, third year students? What have they been up to and how have they found their internships? Because especially I think about like the arts and humanities, a lot of students are networking for smaller organizations. And so there's not necessarily one central receptacle.

Laura:

If you're going to this Web site, you will find everything listed, a lot of it in the nonprofit arts humanities is much more kind of networking based or conversations with people you're interested in.

Stephanie:

So do you usually connect students to older students or is there like good networking platforms?

Laura:

Yeah, I mean, part of it, too, is just asking people, do you know any second your Masters students? And they're like, oh, yeah, I live with one, right? Or they interact with each other regularly, but they don't think of each other as resources. And so part of it, we just talk about what their social circles look like and who else kind of what are their activities they do around Duke. And so sometimes those are really good opportunities. Otherwise sometimes we'll just do a really quick LinkedIn search, right? Or Duke alumni network, kind of. Who else has been in your shoes before? How do they navigate this situation?

Stephanie:

Yeah. So let's say students have kind of figured out a number of internships opportunities that they want to apply to. They're preparing for an interview process. Now, what kind of preparation or advice you get to students of things to really be looking to showcase during their interview process, depending upon whatever industry they're going to differentiate?

Laura:

Sure. You know, I think the biggest thing in interviews is really about self-awareness, right. It's not always about knowing the specific information that you need for that industry or they're not looking for you to be an expert. They will train you in any internship you have. I always joke around with people and say, like every job I've ever had, I've been trained for except for babysitting. And I probably should have had better training for that. So I would say even if you're at an internship and they ask you or an interview and they ask you like you know about the specific information, I say it's less about knowing the answer an