Your first internship application: CV, cover letter and where to apply
How to build a CV with no work experience, what a cover letter is actually for, how many applications it takes, and how to prepare for the interview.
The maddening part of a first internship application is that experience is required and experience can only be gained by doing an internship. The loop is real but less closed than it looks: the person reading internship applications is not looking for experience, they are looking for someone who can learn the job. The CV's task is to show that.
Timing: the most common mistake is applying late
In most sectors internship places fill at the start of the application season. Summer internships typically open from winter onwards, earlier still at large companies. A search that begins in April is applying for leftovers.
A workable plan:
- Start looking four to six months before the period you want to work.
- If your internship is a course requirement, find out early which documents the university needs. Companies ask whether your paperwork is ready, and candidates who cannot answer drop down the list.
- Treat applying as a process spread over weeks, not a single evening's task.
Building a CV with no experience
One page. Not two. The person reading it is spending seconds, not minutes.
Header: name, city, phone, email, and a portfolio, GitHub or LinkedIn link if you have one. Use a serious email address; one left over from school makes an impression before anything is read.
Education: university, subject, expected graduation date. Include your grade average if it is good; leave it out if it is not — it is not compulsory.
Instead of "experience", write what you have done. This section is never empty. All of the following count:
- Course projects and your final-year project
- Society and club responsibilities — organising an event is genuine project management
- Volunteering
- Things you have built on your own
- Competitions, hackathons, workshops
- Part-time jobs, even unrelated ones. Working a till says "takes responsibility and turns up on time".
Write each entry as an outcome, not a duty. "Responsible for the society's social media" is weak. "Ran the society's event announcements; average attendance doubled over six events that term" is strong. Where there are no numbers, still be concrete: what did you do, why, and how.
Skills: be honest. Claiming "advanced Excel" and then failing to build a pivot table in the interview is worse than claiming nothing. State language levels realistically.
Leave out: date of birth, marital status, ID numbers, a photo (convention varies by country — common in some, not expected in much of Europe), "references available on request", and lists of adjectives ("dynamic, driven, team player"). Adjectives without evidence say nothing.
Do not send the same CV everywhere
Preparing one CV and sending it to a hundred places is the least efficient method available. Keep a master CV and reorder it for each application so the most relevant project sits at the top.
At larger companies that filter applications automatically, using the words from the advert also matters. If the advert says "data analysis", do not write "data review".
Send a PDF named after you: `ayse-yilmaz-cv.pdf`. A file called `cv_final_v2.docx` has already made its first impression.
Does anyone read the cover letter?
Often not — but when it is read it distinguishes you, precisely because most candidates either skip it or send a template.
A good cover letter is three paragraphs:
- What you are applying for and who you are. One sentence.
- Why this company. This is the only part that cannot be templated: mention something specific they build, ship or do. If the sentence "a leading organisation in its sector" fits every company you are writing to, it fits none of them.
- Why you. Take one item from the CV and connect it to a need in the advert.
Keep it under half a page, and do not restate the CV in prose.
Where to apply
- The university careers service. The most overlooked resource; often the only office with direct company relationships.
- Lecturers and research groups. Academic internships and project assistantships are frequently never advertised.
- Job boards and company career pages. Large companies usually announce structured internship programmes only on their own sites.
- Direct email. Small companies and studios rarely advertise but do take interns. A short, specific email works.
- Alumni. Writing to a graduate from your department gets a far higher response rate than a cold application.
How many applications it takes
Setting the expectation correctly makes the process less punishing. Response rates for internship applications are low, and that is not a verdict on the candidate: there are few places and many applicants.
Do not treat one rejection as data. If dozens of applications produce no response at all, then review the CV and the letter. Having a careers adviser or someone working in the field spend fifteen minutes on it beats ten rounds of self-editing.
The interview
Internship interviews rarely test technical depth. They test three things: willingness to learn, communication, and whether your interest is real.
Prepare:
- "Tell me about yourself." A rehearsed two-minute answer. Not your CV read aloud: your subject, your interest, one relevant project, and why you are here.
- Every line on your CV. Be able to talk about everything you wrote. If you cannot, do not write it.
- "Tell me about a difficulty you handled." Pick a concrete episode: the situation, what you did, what came of it.
- Your own questions. Answering "no" to "any questions?" reads as indifference. Ask what the team is working on, what an intern actually does there, how feedback is given.
If you are asked something you do not know, do not invent an answer. "I don't know that, but here is how I would approach it" lands far better than a wrong one.
After applying
A short, polite follow-up after a week or ten days is appropriate; persistent chasing is not. If you are rejected, ask for feedback — most will not reply, but the ones who do will change your next application.
Keep a record of every application: where, when, and with which version of the CV. Next year, applying to the same company, that record will be worth having.