Evan Carmichael argues internships should prioritize learning over résumé padding. Target small companies or entrepreneurs without formal programs, send a passionate outreach email, and ask for more work once you're in. His former unpaid intern Adis became a long-term team member.
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How do I find an internship? If you are young, if you're just starting out, if you want to learn about an industry, one of the best ways to do it is to become an intern at a company that you respect, that you look up to, that you want to emulate, and figure out, is this path for you or not? I always encourage young people to try as many things as possible so you don't get locked into one thing too early. You have to find what your life's passion is, what your purpose is, and that comes from exploring a lot of different options and not get too down on yourself when you haven't found it. Because a lot of people get locked into something way too early, and then they're stuck the rest of their lives doing this one thing, and they end up hating it more and more and more and wishing they had some other option. When you're young, you have the ability to try all these things out before you have, you know, burdens, before you have responsibilities, before you have to, you know, a spouse, kids, a house, mortgage, all those things to worry about. Now is your time. Go out, explore, learn what you are meant to do. And if it doesn't work out at some position, 3 months, 6 months, leave it and go to something else. It's okay to bounce around. Now, how do you get that internship? It's a question I got from one of my YouTube viewers, Berta. Thank you guys, I love getting the questions on YouTube. Berta wrote to say, "I'm a marketing student. I'm trying to find an internship in marketing consultancy." I love branding, and basically it goes on, but basically has not been able to find an internship for one of the companies she's looked at and wanted my advice on how to go and get this internship. So here's what I would do if I was trying to get an internship. I would first look at the ideal companies that I want to work for and where you're going to get the most learning opportunity. Okay, if you're doing it just for a resume then the bigger companies look better. But if you're doing it to really learn, you're gonna get much more hands-on experience working for a smaller company. Because the big companies don't really value their interns too much. You're gonna be doing pretty boring jobs. You'll be learning a little bit and you'll get the name on the resume, but you're not gonna really increase your skills. And in my opinion, if you're gonna take a job, if you're gonna go work for somebody else, you wanna do something where you're gonna learn something. You're not doing it for the money, you're not doing it for the resume, you're doing it to learn. And so the best opportunities will come with the smaller companies. And the smaller companies may not even have an internship program. Here's the thing, I'd look at— I'd look for any entrepreneur, look for a company that you respect, maybe 10 employees, around that size, so they're not just starting up, but they're doing some amazing work, and they're small enough that if you join them, you'll have a ton of work to do. Every entrepreneur has tons of work that they would love to give to somebody. Tons. They are struggling. They are, they are in way over their heads. They are working crazy number of hours. They need reliable people that they can count on. And if you're looking for even, you said, a free internship, that's something that people would scoop up. So I try to find an entrepreneur that you look up to, is doing some amazing work that you one day might want to emulate. Have your own marketing consultancy company and making that, you know, 10 people plus type of business. Find them out and contact them. Let them know what you're doing, just like this passionate email you sent me here on YouTube. Because they may not even thought of an internship program, but they are always looking for people who are talented, passionate, and want to learn. And once you get in, once you go meet them, let them know why you want to do this, what you hope to accomplish. Because not enough employees are passionate enough about the work that they're doing. If you come in with passion and excitement for marketing, for branding, you're gonna blow them away. Especially if it's free to start, they're gonna be crazy for not hiring you. That's your first step. Once you get in, you wanna learn as much as you can about the business. You wanna be mentored by the entrepreneur. You wanna take on as many projects as you can. And you're gonna figure out if this business is for you or not. And don't, don't accept just the project they give you. Ask for more. No employee asks for more, right? Nobody asks to do more than what they're given. This is your chance to stand out, to shine, to really learn the business. And if you're doing a great job, they're going to be fools not to hire you, not to want to turn this into a full-time position for you. And that's going to be a pretty fortunate position for you to be in. And you'll discover, is this the business that you want to learn from or not? If it is, you continue on. If it's not, you go intern somewhere else. Different business, different industry. And that's okay until you figure out what you're born to do. So I will continue on my path. If you really need that resume, just the name, keep going after the big companies who have formal programs. That's okay, but I think you're gonna get a lot better education and a lot better personal development working for a smaller company who doesn't even have an internship program, and you can be the first person to to join them. Just as one quick aside, I never had a huge internship program. I didn't even think of the concept. And a school came to me and said, "We'd like to do an internship program with you." I thought, "That's a really cool idea." And one of the first people that came in was a guy named Adis, who was from Holland, and he came to Canada where I am and needed a job opportunity. So it was a free internship. And he became one of my programmers to help out in designing my website, programming and designing the website. And he was great, and he hustled, and he worked, and I felt the passion when I first met him, and it continued. And I hired him, and he's still with me now. I mean, this is maybe 6, 7 years later. He's still on the team. He's still developing new stuff for the website. And so if you show your passion and your excitement to an entrepreneur who has that same passion and excitement, who wants to build something special, and you could be a key part of helping them get to the next They're gonna want to bring you on board, and if you do a great job and prove yourself and ask for more work and pour yourself into this, they're gonna want to hire you. And you get to choose if you want to stay at that company or not. A great position to be in. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me always want to do more for you. And please leave a comment below, let me know what you think. If you have a question for your company, let me know, I'll make a video response. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
