Seven ways to stir up an “instant internship” this summer

You graduated two weeks ago and you don’t know what you’re going to do with your life, much less the rest of the summer. Or you lost your job a year ago and you haven’t gone to a job interview in three months. Or the company you signed onto for the summer just filed for bankruptcy.
Quick – let’s heat up a summer job. It’s time to create an instant internship. That’s my term for an internship that is almost as easy to cook up as a barbecue for five friends.
This quick-made internship may not spring forth from the top tier law firms or at old-fashioned manufacturing companies struggling to keep its current workers in paychecks. And they may not pay as much as you think you’re worth – but they’re not volunteer work either. It is possible to develop an instant internship with a little ingenuity, luck and sales abilities. And it’s possible to take an internship even if you’re 33 or 57, especially if you’re changing careers or have been out of the workforce for a few years.
Here’s seven strategies for stirring up a short-term assignment in a hurry:

• Search for successes. Look for organizations in your city that cannot keep up with demand. They are hot and they are in need of new staff. They may be in health care (see my article on healthy careers from the Washington Post) or mobile communications (such as those that develop advertising or specialized apps for our cell phones). Professional, scientific and technical employers are the most likely to hire this year, acccording to the Society for Human Resource Management, and that includes marketing and engineering firms and laboratories. Hint: Do some research on their products or service and growth plans so when you query them you’re already matching your talents to their success tracks or needs.

• Drop out, drop in. Major companies choose their interns in February or March. So by June, a few have thought better of it – or found something better. When they drop out, you could fill in, suggests Mark Oldman, Vault.com co-founder said.  So contact the internship coordinator now and offer to serve as the relief pitcher- which after all is the one who often wins the game.
• Go face to face.  Visit a half dozen organizations in a business park and introduce yourself as their problem-solving. high-energy intern (or other words that make you sound very appealing). Go mainly to smaller or mid-size employers and you could stumble upon a job before they’ve posted it, according to Richard Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute? books. This direct approach is one of his top 5 best job search strategies (you can see all five as they appeared in his book  “The Job-Hunters Survival Guide.” (Ten Speed Press, $9.99, 102 pages)  which was excerpted with a Washington Post article last year.
• Get personal. Ask Dad and Aunt Sue or your neighbor whose yard you used to mow for work, or leads.  Family ties and personal connections were the No. 1 way this year’s college graduates expect to find jobs, according to a Monster.com survey. While you’re at it, find a family member or professional friend to promote you online. Ask them to send out your qualifications on Twitter’s Hire Friday or in a LinkedIn status or other posting.
• Follow in a new executive. When a new CEO or CIO joins an organization, they want to put their stamp on the organization – and fast. So often they want their own team in place. If you time it right and write an excellent letter to that executive, you could come in as an executive assistant or intern to the chief. Vault’s Oldman told me about a similar strategy: Write a persuasive, personal letter to a half dozen senior executives offering to serve as their executive assistant / intern for the summer. Choose people in fields that interest you, then Google them. The letter must be customized to that person’s specific work and explain “why you’re excited to work with them,” Oldman told me. “It shows initiative.”
• Seek a one-month assignment. Maybe this won’t be a summer-long internship but it could be a vacation relief or maternity leave replacement slot.  Offer to work the midnight shift; the dirty, undesirable clean-up job; the runner or the person who fields calls and customers who walk in. And take the job with a smile – and then come up with some ways to do it and something a little more meaningful too. You can find these directly or go to a temp firm, which is a field that’s been growing lately too.
• Win the internship coordinator’s respect. Be personable, polite and persistent. Offer her help in recruiting for future internships. Offer to carry her boxes to the next recruiting fair in your region. Show a lot of interest. “If you’re on par with 10 other people, I’m going to see that person demonstrated their interest.  not one of 20 generic applications.  you’re putting your best self forward,” said the Smithsonian’s Tracie Spinale.  Even if you cannot land a summer internship, you’re putting yourself in place for one in the fall, when the competition is less fierce.

Some of these instant internships may take a week or three to work out. And some may pay less than the $17 an hour average pay for the college-student internship, as reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. (That average may be high because many of the better companies respond to NACE’s surveys.)

But most are ways to find “the hidden job market” of unadvertised possibilities and openings – where by some accounts more than half of all jobs are. Learn to succeed at that and anything they throw at you in your internship or the real jobs after it will be like mixing lemonade for your barbecue – sweet and cool.