We’ve talked about some big, mid-career strategic moves like taking a step back or getting an MBA.
Now I want to talk about one of the most important building blocks at the very start of your career: the internship.
Let me be direct: for most people, your last internship is the single biggest factor in determining your first full-time job.
It’s that important.
But landing a great one is incredibly competitive. Today, I’m going to share some real-world strategies for not just getting an internship, but using it as a strategic move, based on my own very different experiences.
Your “Unrelated” Job Is Your Secret Weapon
Let’s start with the biggest challenge for an undergraduate: how to stand out when you don’t have “real” experience.
Your part-time, “unrelated” job is your secret weapon. But you have to learn how to talk about it.
When I was in undergrad at a non-target school, my main experience was working as a cashier at Babies R Us. I was applying for a highly competitive engineering internship at General Electric.
On paper, it was a joke.
But I learned how to translate my experience.
In the interview, I didn’t talk about stocking shelves. I talked about inventory management.
I didn’t talk about working the cash register. I talked about handling financial transactions and being accountable for a cash drawer.
And most importantly, I didn’t talk about dealing with angry parents. I talked about stakeholder management and de-escalation.
I reframed my retail experience using the language of their corporate world. That is how you get their attention.
The Grad School Trap
Now, I want to talk about something nobody tells you when you go straight from undergrad to a specialized Master’s program, like I did.
I call it the “Grad School Trap.”
I thought my Master’s in Mathematical Finance was a golden ticket. But I suddenly found myself in a tough spot.
I was no longer eligible for most undergraduate internships, but I was now competing for the same graduate-level internships as 28-year-old MBAs from Harvard and MIT who had five years of work experience.
I was stuck in the middle.
It’s a huge, unexpected challenge. You have to be aware that a Master’s degree without professional experience puts you in a very unique and competitive bracket.
The Unpaid Internship: When It’s Worth It
So what do you do if you’re in a tough spot like that, and you’re struggling to land a paid, prestigious role?
This brings us to a controversial topic: the unpaid internship.
Let me be clear: taking an unpaid internship is a privilege that not everyone can afford. I was living with my mother, brother, and sister during my internship so I didn’t have to worry about money.
But if you are in a position to consider it, you need to be extremely strategic.
For me, an unpaid internship is only worth it if it checks three specific boxes:
First, it has to be with a prestigious or well-known BRAND NAME that will act as a powerful signal on your resume.
Second, it has to be in your exact TARGET INDUSTRY AND CITY. It needs to get you into the ecosystem you want to be a part of.
And third, you need to have a clear, SHORT-TERM GOAL for what you’re getting out of it.
For me, I was at BU in Boston, but I knew I needed to be in New York. I was striking out.
So I took an unpaid role at Merrill Lynch in their wealth management division. It checked all three boxes.
The Brand: Merrill Lynch. The Location: New York City. My Goal: Simply to get the line item “Merrill Lynch, New York, NY” on my resume to prove my commitment to working in financial services and the city.
It was a short-term, strategic investment in my personal brand, and it worked.
Create Your Own Experience
And if you do not have any experience at all, whatsoever, you should start considering finding opportunities now.
Look at volunteer opportunities. There are many resources online for this.
If you can’t find any of that, think about ways you can potentially start a business with little to no money.
For example, one other experience I had on my resume was Flipping Cars. My brother, neighbor, and I loved hooking up cars. Nothing fancy, we’re talking about beaten old Honda Civics and Acuras.
During my time working at Babies R Us, I had saved about $1K to buy my first car. I then watched a bunch of videos, scoured Craigslist and junkyards for ways to upgrade the car and make it more visually appealing and perform better.
Once I did that, I would sell it for a profit and do it again and again. I did it 5 times. It was a fun little business and I was able to speak on that as well.
Also, start looking at opportunities as soon as you step onto campus. I didn’t know much about internships when I got into undergrad, and that’s why I didn’t look at opportunities immediately.
I wish I could’ve, because I would have had the opportunity to try more things during undergrad.
Your Task
So here’s your task for this post. It’s all about the art of translation.
I want you to take your most “unrelated” job, whether it’s a retail job, a food service job, or a summer camp counselor.
Write down three bullet points for that job as if they were going on your resume, but write them using corporate language.
Translate your tasks into core skills like “stakeholder management,” “process optimization,” or “team collaboration.”
This wraps up this phase on key career milestones. You now have frameworks for thinking about taking a step back, the MBA, and internships as powerful, strategic tools.
In the coming posts, we’ll talk about the most important thing of all: playing the long game and building a career that is authentically yours.
I’ll see you there.
Next up: Playing the long game
Here is the complete career playbook (all 26 posts with real-world interview, resume, and career examples) for anyone who is pivoting roles, industries, about to graduate, stuck in their current path, not sure what to do next, etc.
The Complete Interview Playbook for Career Changers: Every Strategy, Every Framework, All in One Place
If you’re reading this, you’re probably not the “perfect” candidate.