Guide to Landing Your First Internship with No Previous Experience

By Alexander Hu and Xavier Genio

Introduction

One of the most important factors that decide where you end up working after graduation is what type of internships you do. Getting a first internship early, no matter the company, can have a huge snowball effect on your career. Landing your first one may be daunting, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be.

In our experience, the way to land your first is very different from what you would want to do to land a subsequent internship. Landing your first internship is often the hardest because you’d be applying with zero experience, but it becomes easier once you have some on your resume. There seems to be a lot of good advice on how to land internships and how to word your resume when you have experiences. However, how would you fill out a resume with limited experiences?

Our page will provide a straightforward guide on how to navigate the application cycle and optimize your resume. It’ll boost your chances of getting noticed by recruiters, landing interviews and passing it, especially for students with limited experiences.

The Guide

Here, we provide a 7-step guide to getting your first internship from start to finish.

An overview of our 7 steps to landing an internship. This is an infographic that we created ourselves.

1. Gather Your Limited Experiences

You may not have “real-world” experience but you probably have gained valuable skills through class projects, clubs, or part-time jobs. Create a new document to help brainstorm these skills and experiences, focusing on what you learned, solved, and the results.

Here are some things you can include in the document:

Class projects, personal projects, or any research you’ve done
Volunteer work, club involvement, or part-time jobs
Focus on skills and outcomes rather than titles
What you did and accomplished for these experiences

Tip – Think of any transferable experience: teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving.

You can include high school experience for now, but eventually, you’ll start removing them as you gain more college-level experiences, internships, and projects!

2. Creating Your Resume

Source: This is a good template for your resume (jake’s resume).=

So now that you have a brainstorming document, you can start creating your resume using this information. There are a plethora of resources on the internet that can help but here is a brief overview of what you should include:

Keep it to one page with clear headings and sections
Your contact information and relevant websites (like linkedin)
Use action verbs and quantify results when possible
- e.g., “led a team of 3 to complete xx project resulting in yy% improvement of zz”
Education, Projects, Skills, Experience, and Relevant Coursework
- also include your roles and the organization/company (if applicable)
Make sure it’s easy to read
- use bullets and consistent formatting

Georgia Tech’s Career Services provides a great and more detailed guide on creating a resume. Here are some key topics that you should keep in mind from it:

Resume Sections
The “SAIL” methodology
- skill, achievement, impact, learning
Resume Action Verbs
Additional Pro Tips

This is a picture of an example resume for “Charles Bloomberg” referenced from Rezi Resume First-Year Examples. It shows how a student could showcase the skills they’ve gained even with a limited number of experiences and projects.

Source These two are good examples of what your resumes could look like. While Matt Smith’s resume does have more experiences, Charles Bloomberg’s stretches his limited amount of involvements to showcase his gained skills.

From UPenn Careers Services and Rezi Resume First-Year Examples

Here are some other useful sources that you can reference when creating your resume:

3. Optimizing Resume for ATS

Source: This picture shows two resumes: one that passes the ATS and its criteria as well as one that doesn’t

After creating your resume, you need to first check if it can pass the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). This is a software that many employers use to automatically sort the hundreds of applications they get for a given job opportunity.

BUT FIRST… You will need to first find the type of jobs you are interested in doing. Through various job boards (like linkedin, indeed, etc), find real internship postings and their descriptions:

Analyze what the requirements are
Research the companies and their missions
Write down key words that you see

Ideally, you’d want to cater your resume specifically to every job you apply for. Tailoring your resume gives you a better ATS score for any given job. However, realistically, this isn’t very sustainable especially if you are mass-applying to various jobs. Research the common phrasings and words that constantly show up and include them somewhere in your resume.

Tip– If you find that there are different roles with different descriptions, consider creating other versions of your resume to cater to these roles.

This helps with balancing the quality of your resume with the quantity of job applications

Do’s	Don’t’s
Use keywords from the job description in context with your experiences	Don’t use tables, images, and unconventional fonts
Use standard section headers like “Experience,” “Projects,” “Skills”	Don’t be vague when writing out your experiences
Keep formatting (bullet points, fonts, etc.) simple, consistent and readable to the ATS	Don’t include non-relevant experiences or jargon just to fill the resume
Include relevant skills and experiences	Don’t use fancy or complex formats

Infographic of dos and don’ts for creating our resume

You can check if your resume would pass the ATS through free ATS checkers by searching for them (like JobScan)

4. Landing Your First Interview

The job application process may start out confusing to those who are new to the job market.

Now it’s time to actually apply to jobs. Each company may have different requirements when it comes to their application but you can expect the following:

They’ll either prefer applications directly through their website, through a third party (like Workday), or accepts either one
Manually inputting your experiences each and every time
- Sometimes they have an automatic system that pulls from your resume but usually it doesn’t format properly

Since you probably have limited experiences, the key is to maximize your chances by applying strategically and consistently:

Apply Early and Broadly

Don’t limit yourself to top-tier companies
Some jobs fill up their positions before the deadline
Smaller companies tend to get less applicants

Leverage Networking

Reach out to alumni, professors, or club connections
Get referrals!!
- It helps increase your visibility to the hiring team and gives you an automatic advantage
Networking events give you the chance to connect to those working in your desired field
See the “Leverage the Career Fair” step in this guide!

Tailer your resume and cover letter for each application

Check out the “Optimize Resume for ATS” if you haven’t
Cover letters should show that you took the time to research the company and your relevant experiences to the job you are applying for

Consider asking for follow-ups or (if you’re brave enough) cold-emailing a company’s hiring team

Many companies don’t email rejections
Shows continued interest in the job role
Increases visibility outside of the ATS
BUT keep these emails short and professional since these hiring teams are busy with applications

These are just some ways to increase your chances of getting to the interview stage of the hiring process.

5. Leveraging the Career Fairs

This is an example of a career fair hosted by Georgia Tech in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium and was specifically for the College of Computing. It shows the various companies recruiting and many people lining up to talk to them.

Most colleges host career fairs where students can directly meet recruiters and learn about job opportunities. These can give you the chance to make a personal impression and stand out amongst fellow applicants.

For Georgia Tech specifically, you can find the schedule here.

Preparing for the career fair:

Research companies before attending
- Know their roles, values, and recent news
- Where they will be located during the event
- Plan which companies you’d like to go to and in what order
Create and practice a 30-second elevator pitch summarizing who you are, what you bring, and what you are looking for
- remember what is on your resume
Also prepare thoughtful questions to ask the recruiters
Print multiple copies of your resume
- having too many is better than running out (10-15 copies)
- Place them into a folder
Plan to dress professionally

During The Career Fair:

Arrive early and visit your top companies first to avoid long lines
Pitch yourself, ask questions and try to collect recruiters’ contact or LinkedIns to follow-up
Treat your talk to the recruiter as a friendly conversation and not as a robotic script
Get as many career fair application links since some companies provide special ones for attendees

6. Internship Interview Prep

Source: This picture shows two people in suits high-fiving presumably celebrating landing an interview

Okay, so you’ve landed your first interview! You will now need to prepare to talk to the hiring team in real-time.

The best way to prepare is to practice through mock interviews. Friends and family can help but if you need someone else, your college probably provides opportunities to do so through their career services. For example, Georgia Tech has their Big Interview opportunity.

See this video for how to pitch yourself

General Tips:

Practice behavioral questions using the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result
Prepare technical or role-specific questions if applicable
Research the company’s mission, products, and recent news
Mock interviews with friends, career centers, or mentors can boost confidence
Practice being conversational and not robotic

Depending on the company, they may start with a behavioral or with a technical interview (if applicable). They can also have several hiring stages before officially hiring you so research them and be prepared.

Example:

The Interview Question: “Tell me about a time you had to tackle a complex technical problem.”

Situation: “In my database systems course, our major assignment involved building the core backend components of a database engine.”
Task: “My specific task was to implement a transaction manager from scratch in Java. It needed to include robust logging and crash recovery mechanisms to ensure absolute data integrity during simulated system failures.”
Action: “I started by designing a Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) protocol to guarantee that all transactions were securely recorded to disk before committing. While implementing the recovery phase, I encountered a tricky concurrency bug where aborted transactions were improperly rolling back. I systematically stepped through the thread execution using a debugger, isolated the race condition, and refactored the Java code to enforce stricter lock management during the undo and redo phases.”
Result: “The transaction manager successfully passed all simulated crash tests with zero data loss. The implementation earned full marks, and the experience gave me a much deeper, practical understanding of how databases guarantee reliability under the hood.”

Common Behavioral Questions:

“Can you tell me about yourself?”
“What are your strengths and weaknesses?”
“Why do you want to work here?”
“What skills make you a good fit for this job?”
Interviewers can also ask questions about your resume, personality, and what you know about the company

For Technical Interviews:

Practice communicating your thought process for a given problem by finding example questions
Interviewers may also ask why you are doing certain actions
Understand the fundamentals of the job you are applying for

7. During the Interview

Source: This picture shows a person nervous during a job interview which would be similar to how first-time interns would feel while in their hiring process.

The interview is the most crucial part of the hiring process so it is important that you do several things:

Arrive early (or log in early for virtual interviews).
Dress professionally and maintain good body language
Listen carefully, answer clearly, and use examples from projects, classwork, or volunteer experience
Ask insightful questions about the team, projects, or company culture
Follow up with a thank-you email within 24 hours, reiterating your interest and fit
Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) when answering
- but be sure it doesn’t sound very robotic or scripted
It is also important to show your enthusiasm and personality.

This guide does not provide specific major- or job-related technical interview advice so research the types of questions your job would ask and prepare accordingly. However some general tips are:

Communicate and/or demonstrate your thought process clearly and concisely
Ask clarifying questions before solving a problem
If you make mistakes, acknowledge them, correct them, and act professional

Remember, your personality, enthusiasm, and ability to outwardly solve is just as important as having technical and fundamental knowledge. Even with limited experiences, first-time interns can stand-out and leave a strong impression.

Good Luck!