With the next hiring cycle for summer internships in full swing, there sure is a lot to wrap your head around if you want to throw your hat into the ring. Effectively applying for internships is inherently complex, but a little organization can go a long way. If you're an engineer like me, you likely encounter large datasets in your everyday life. The information you collect while applying for internships is no different than these datasets, and can be managed just the same: With Excel.
For each position, be sure to collect the following pieces of information:
- The corporation or group the position is for.
- The name of the position or title of the job application.
- A link to the original job posting.
- A link to the portal used to check your application status.
- Any contact information for recruiters or hiring managers.
- Any other notes you might have regarding the position.
You can arrange these in any way you want, but I personally have them ordered similar to above. These will be the column titles for your spreadsheet. If you are a more advanced Excel user, it may also help to create in-cell drop-downs for application statuses, projected response dates, etc (if not, here's a tutorial from Answerlyst). Don't want to make an application tracker from scratch? That's okay! I uploaded mine here as a template.
Just like any organizational system, this might not be the solution that works for you, so feel free to comment on the original article on LinkedIn and suggest other ways to make a useful internship application tracker!