How to Make Your Own Summer Internship with a Marketable Skillset
It’s summertime, and like many students, your seasonal internship may have fallen through or you may need to plan for a productive gap year. However, there’s still a way for you to spend your summer months gaining useful, real-world experience and that’s by acquiring digital skills.
These are highly-valued skillsets that every type of business and organization needs—not just tech companies. Whether it’s an indie bookstore or a non-profit, they all could use someone with digital skills.
This summer, there is a unique opportunity to gain a real, valuable skill and put it for a productive gap year. If you stay committed, this experience can translate into an authentic extracurricular on your college applications or more paid work down the line.
Learn a highly-valuable skill that isn’t overly complicated
Since you’re trying to train yourself and earn useful experience in one summer, you want to find a skill to learn that’s both marketable and straight-forward.
This will make it easier to stay committed to the goal of adding a new and valuable skill to your tool belt, as a trade that’s too difficult or low in demand won’t give you the prime experience you’re looking for.
If you have trouble picking a skill to learn, think about what interests and basic skills you already have. Picking a skill you’re excited about will help you push through the challenging parts of mastering it and increases the chance you’ll want to use that skill again in the future.
There’s no shortage of skills you can learn outside of a traditional classroom setting. Here are some examples:
- Doing market research
- Writing blog posts that are search engine optimized
- Running a social media account
- Doing a search engine optimization audit
- Finding actionable insights from their advertising or traffic reports
- Building scrapers or other small applications
- Running performance audits
- Designing ads or other marketing materials
- Managing a Wix or WordPress site
You’ll need to do more than reading a few articles or watching a short tutorial in order to really learn something and get an employer to say “yes” to you.
It’s important to dedicate real time to studying your new skill. To do this, set aside several hours each day where you’ll focus on gaining a more thorough understanding.
If you’re ready for the commitment, you can learn a marketable skill with free or low-cost sites that offer short courses. You can also forego a class structure entirely and find relevant tutorials on sites like YouTube, provided you’re committed to putting in the time and effort it takes to set your own pace.
Some of these sites include:
FutureLearn
Udemy
Google Digital Garage
Coursera
Skillshare
YouTube
Find opportunities to use your skills
Small, local businesses and nonprofit organizations are in particular need of these skills given the current situation.
Before you start sending out mass-emails, try tapping into your network first. Reach out to any friends or family who have small local or online businesses, organizations, or personal websites. Many people have their own Etsy shop or a personal blog that could require some attention.
You can also think about places and people you have a personal connection with: a tutoring service that helped you in the past, your favorite bakery, or even one of your teachers.
Any of these could be interested in your skill:
- Restaurants
- Local home service providers, like lawn care, plumbing, carpentry, and hardware stores
- Bookstores
- Educational services, like music instructors and tutors
- Yoga or dance studios
- Law firms or tax preparation businesses
- Nail salons, hair salons, or massage studios
- Babysitting services
- Your local Humane Society
Once you’ve found a few places, do your research. Look at their website and social media sites to get a feel for what they’re doing.Try to imagine how your skill can help them.
Perfect your pitch
Now that you’ve started learning a new, valuable skill, you’ll want to learn how to create a concise pitch about yourself and what you have to offer.
Self-promotion can be tricky, especially at first, but there are a few steps that can simplify the process and ensure you get responses.
- Write a unique letter for each company you contact that opens with an interesting hook and ends with a compelling call to action.
- Make sure your pitch answers the questions: who are you, what can you do for them, and why should they add you to the team?
- Let them know what knowledge or skills you have, including any courses you’ve taken.
A good example of a well-crafted pitch looks like this:
Do you need a summer social strategy but you’re short on time and money?
I’m Ann, a Junior at All-American High School, and I’d love to help. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks taking a course on social media marketing and researching independently. I also have accounts on most social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
I can write social media posts for your business accounts, create a content calendar, and perform hashtag or keyword research. Since I’m just starting, I’d like to offer my services for free as an unpaid intern.
I have just a few tips I’d love to share with you. I’m looking forward to speaking with you further.
Commit to doing your best
When you’ve landed an internship, it’s time to put in the work. An employer is taking a chance on you based on the skillset you’ve marketed; it’s important to stay focused on the goals you’ve set with the organization and prove the benefit of your experience.
You can do this in a few ways:
- Communicating clear expectations with your employer about what you can do and how much time you can commit
- Following through on all of your deadlines and deliverables in a professional manner, or giving your employer a heads-up if something is harder or taking longer than you expected
- Continuing to keep yourself educated: you may have gotten the internship, but your skills are still new and there’s a lot left for you to learn
- Creating a transition plan for the company once your internship is over so that the work you’ve put in place continues
- Showing your commitment to the work you’re doing will reflect well on you and could lead to more opportunities with the organization in the future.
Conclusion
You can gain valuable experience by using this time to learn a new, marketable skill and craft your own real-world experience with a free summer internship for a productive gap year.
The internet’s full of free or low-cost sites where you can quickly learn a highly-valued skill like content marketing or managing a WordPress site. Sending out a self-promotion letter and finding businesses who need your services is simple enough, and can help you make the most of your summer in an experience that can benefit you in the future.
You have everything to win from creating your internship and productive gap year: a highly-valuable skill, authentic work experience, and connections for networking. Really, what do you have to lose?
