Internships are a great way to get real-world experience and explore the field of biomedical engineering in industry, academia and national laboratories.
How to plan for an Internship
- Visit the Career Center, located on the second floor of South Hall. They host resume and interview workshops and offer one-on-one help.
- Build a resume. The Career Center, as well as many academic clubs on campus, host workshops to help you build and refine your resume.
- Think about your interests. Keep in mind that internships are short-term and are opportunities to explore new areas. Be flexible.
- Be willing to relocate. Internships can be an opportunity to travel. The Global Learning Hub offers international internships, which often have less competition.
- Build relationships with professors. Applications sometimes ask for letters of recommendation from professors within science and engineering fields. Letters of recommendation are always better coming from people who know you well. One way to begin is by attending office hours and getting to know your professors there.
- Build a LinkedIn profile. Use LinkedIn for networking with companies, alumni and professional coworkers, not socializing.
- Network. There are many ways of gathering information about job opportunities: friends and family may know who is hiring in your field. You can also ask other students how they got their job/internship.
- It’s never too early to start the internship search process, but most companies look for students who have completed some engineering courses.
How To Find Job Openings
- Handshake maintains a list of job openings.
- Career Fairs. Look sharp, bring copies of your resume and ask for email addresses so you can follow up. Different companies attend different career fairs, so attend all of them.
- Sign up for the Listserv from the Career Center.
- Find companies in your field of interest. Many companies do not recruit directly through Handshake and have jobs posted on their website.
- Consider government jobs, such as national laboratories, agencies and services. CalJobs and USAjobs list state and federal job openings, and ORISE is a site with openings at national laboratories.
- Join the Cal Aggie Student Alumni Association. This program provides many additional networking events with UC Davis alumni such as the “Take an Aggie to Work” program.
- Review a variety of organizations offering internship opportunities.
Follow up
- If you get a representative’s email address, email them soon after the event. Do not expect them to remember you weeks later if you haven’t contacted them.
- If you receive an email or call from a potential employer, respond to it.
Still No Luck?
- Talk to an advisor in the Career Center. They can help figure out what aspect of your search needs to be enhanced.
- Be prepared to apply to a wide range of internships. Think about applying to at least 50 companies.
- Be persistent. Following up with companies is very important.
- Don’t give up. Companies can look for interns late in the school year, sometimes as late as summer session. It’s also possible to be an intern after you have graduated.
- Get involved in a student club or competition team. This will add experience to your resume while giving you access to company contacts.