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.

If you’ve been dreaming or praying for a second career that will help others, consider becoming a teacher or a religious leader.

Educators and medical personnel are among the sectors that will offer the most new encore career opportunities this decade, according to a new report from Northeastern University and Boston Redevelopment Authority. Ministers and clergy also will be in demand. The report, called “After the Recovery: Help Needed,” predicts labor shortages by 2018 when an estimated 5 to 6 million jobs will be created but unfilled.

“When the nation comes out of the current jobs recession – and this may take two to three years – we will begin to see spot shortages in labor markets,” writes co-author Barry Bluestone, dean of Northeastern’s School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs. “By 2018, with no change in current labor force participation rates and immigration rates and an expected return to healthy economic growth, we will have more jobs than people to fill them. That’s true within the entire economy and particularly true of the fast-growing social sector.”

The social sector consists of health care, education, social assistance, nonprofits, the arts and government. Though it accounts for one-third of all current U.S. jobs, it will represent 47 percent of the jobs growth through 2018, Bluestone’s report predicts.

Social sector jobs also will represent about half of the 5.0 to 5.7 million new jobs that will go begging in 2018.

To be practical, here’s the 15  job titles offering the most encore career opportunities, and the projected increases through 2018:

1. Teachers, primary, secondary, special ed          647,300

2. Registered nurses 581,500

3. Home health care aides 460,900

4. Personal and home care aides 375,800

5. Nursing aides, orderlies, attendants 276,000

6. Medical assistants 163,900

7. Practical and vocational nurses, licensed          155,600

8. Business operations specialists 143,200

9. Managers, general and operations 143,200

10. Child care workers                   142,100

11. Teacher assistants 134,900

12. Receptionists and information clerks   132,700

13.  Managers, medical and health services   100,800

14.  Clergy       85,100

15.  Social and human service assistants       79,400

If you want to know more about any of these jobs – including pay, educational requirements and what the work entails – check out the government’s incredible resource called the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

The full report lists another 15 encore careers from the social and government sector that won’t have as many openings (Table 9)

To be sure, about half of these jobs are low-paying — anything with an assistant in it will earn a smaller wage. Some may not appeal to a 60-year-old who does not have the strength to lift patients into wheelchairs or push five or seven babies in strollers.  They may not find the exact job that uses their passions and talents. Instead, trends outlined in this report are valuable as they consider the right path and the better sectors to target. (Near the end are four pages of industry sectors, including some obscure ones that you may otherwise never even consider.)

Plus, MetLife Foundation and Civic Ventures have packaged this report with others that focus on green jobs, education jobs and health jobs. In those separate reports, some emerging jobs are identified, including teacher coach, chronic illness coach, energy auditor, patient navigator, sustainability consultant and home modification specialist.

If teaching sounds like a career track for you, you may want to check out the real case studies of people who moved into teaching and tutoring jobs, as well as some resources and how-tos for getting started down the education path. The organizations offer similar resources on health care and green jobs.

If you’re still unsure what your second career will be, join the club. Reading these reports may open up some new ideas, and so will some informational interviews and conversations with friends already in jobs you are considering.  The key is: Start your journey now and be sure to pack your curiosity and experience.

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The Northeastern – Boston Redevelopment report is based on data from the Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Boston Redevelopment Authority and Northeastern University’s specific occupational forecasts. You can read it online at encore.org .

If you want to learn more about education, green or health care jobs, three shorter reports are also available online. They each contain a lot of other resources, so it may be easier to read one a day and consider it.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook has a wealth of information on hundreds of careers. To learn more about it and how it forecasts job changes, read this article in its quarterly publication. Or check out the BLS list of high-employment, high-wage jobs - including several found on the Northeastern list.

If you want to read about a wide array of jobs – from game developer to pharmacy technicial to sand sculptor – the BLS has published an array of articles over the last decade. (Scroll down a ways to the section titled Occupations and Industries.)

The New York Times published an article on encore careers that looks at patient advocates, health care mediator and green entrepreneurs.

Note: This post appeared originally on WorkingKind on April 1, 2009. The advice is still worthwhile so here it is for this year’s internship seekers:

If you – or your roommate, your daughter or son or nephew – are dragging their feet on going after a summer internship, here’s three good reasons to jump into one:

1. Interns often end up as the first people hired after the cutbacks stop.

2. Students who have had internships before are likely to earn more this summer, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

3. Interns this summer will earn more than last year – a 5 percent increase, according to NACE’s new research.  That means average pay of $15.93 to $18.26 an hour – much better than they’ll get at the  ice cream stand or amusement park.

The NACE research comes from surveys of 318 employers that are its members – they indicate that one-third of their college graduate hires last year were former interns. NACE contacts employers every year to ask about hiring prospects and pay – and its research gives a good benchmark for college hiring.

Yes, there are far fewer internship openings this year than in previous summers - NACE estimates a 21 percent reduction from the 2008 levelels. This reflects the lower workloads and layoffs that have claimed millions of full time jobs.

And yes, it’s late to get started on an internship search. But it’s not impossible. And many of those workplaces that laid people off in January may find by May or June that they’re short handed and need some extra help.

Here’s a Working item I wrote for the Washington Post in May 2007 that gives some smart advice on the last-minute internship:

College classes are winding down and summer internships heating up. Yet for some last minute lookers, it’s not too late to land an internship. Many organizations in and around Washington – - from the Consumer Electronics Association to Marvelous Market to some marketing firms- were advertising for for youthful talent and energy within the last week. And at some large corporations, which typically choose their interns in March or April, some inters will drop out at the last minute, leaving room for latecomers to slide in, said Mark Oldman, Vault.com’s co-founder. Vault publishes information on careers. That’s how Oldman ended up interning at MTV more than a decade ago while studying at Stanford University. “I was burning to work at MTV” with Downtown Julie Brown. Yet the music network didn’t choose him. Still, after classes ended, he called to see if there was any other work possibility, and the hiring manager told him that one intern hadn’t worked out and they wanted him to step in. “I was an internship junkie,” he said, completing six in college. Oldman, who is author of ” Vault’s Guide to Top Internships,” says finding a department head who hires her own interns – instead of relying on human resources managers – may be another door in if you’re running late. And he suggests the “create your own internship” plan. Identify nine or 10 intriguing people who are doing worthwhile or intruing work and write each one a personal letter offering to be their research assistant or intern. The letter must be customized to that person’s specific work and explain “why you’re excited to work with them.” “It shows initiative,” said Oldman, who notes that Vault still has internships to fill in New York.

-Vickie Elmer

So what are you waiting for? There’s still plenty of  time  and more than a few opportunities to find your summer internship.

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Here’s five new resources on landing a great internship this summer:

• Homework is key in the world of competitive internships. My Washington Post piece from Jan. 24, 2010
• How to Land the Internship You Want. Forbes magazine has tips and photos from last spring.
• “College Students: Do This – Get Hired!” a short book by recruiter Mark Lyden offers excellent advice and insider tips.
• The Riley Guide’s internships page offers many other resources and organizations - http://www.rileyguide.com/intern.html
• DCinternNet.  Sign up for the free daily e-tip and list of internships with deadlines soon, or view them online.

Note: I hold the copyright to my Washington Post articles and much of my other writing. If you’d like to republish a piece on your website, please contact me for details and rates.

If you think all the salaries being offered to fresh young grads are rice-and-beans low, you haven’t talked to any chemical engineering majors.

Their starting pay for this year is $65,142, second highest in the National Association of Colleges and Employers just released list of majors with the best salaries. The top spot went to petroleum engineers, a scarce lot of barely 500 graduates in recent years. In a year when salary freezes and reductions were common, they will earn $3,000 more on average than last year.

In fact, engineers claim eight of the 10 highest salaries in NACE’s annual survey, and they’ve been near the top for a few years.

The top five this year are:

1.  Petroleum engineering  - $86,220

2. Chemical engineering  - $65,142

3. Mining / mineral engineering – $64,552

4.  Computer science  - $61,205

5. Computer engineering – $60,879

Others in the top 10 include electrical engineering, manufacturing engineering and information sciences; each will start at salaries above $53,000 on average.

“Many of the engineering disciplines benefit from an imbalance in the supply/demand ratio,” NACE executive director Marilyn Mackes said in a report on salaries last summer. That scarcity of candidates leads to higher pay.

B-school graduates salaries start around $45,000 to $49,000 this year, a small drop from last year.

NACE will give more entry level college grad salary details in April. The 2009 grads experienced a 1.2 percent drop in average salary, to $49,353.

This year’s average declined to  $48,351 based on NACE’s preliminary estimate. Many newcomers start their first job out of college at $30,000.  The average figure covers liberal arts majors, b-school and the techies too.