Finding a design internship is not easy, but don’t give up. I came up with the 10 best useful tips to help you to get you first design internship in this Summer of 2018.
Can’t find a design internship?
Still don’t know how and where to find the internship opportunities?
You come to the right place at right time.
Finding a design internship is not easy, but don’t give up.You just need some tips to guide you through this process. As a senior designer, I have received a lot of email and applications for an internship from student designers, but few of them can meet the requirements of this position. So I came up with these top 10 tips to help you to get your first design internship in this Summer of 2018.
Let’s get started.
1. You are not a student anymore
Stop treating yourself as a college student even if you are an undergraduate. You are the designer who is about to enter the design industry. Unlike in the university, the workplace is very cruel. Anyone can replace you if you don’t fit in.
2. Find your career path
Let’s face it, figuring out what jobs are best suited to your skills and interests is stressful. But you have to choose before landing your first job. What do you want to be? UI designer, UX designer, interaction designer or visual designer? If you are not sure which direction your career should go in, ask someone who has the same experience.
3. Mastering these design skills could get you hired
The theoretical knowledge that you learned in college may not apply in the real design work, but these are fundamental knowledge you should master. Therefore, if you want to be UX designer, you need to do user research, draw wireframes and prototypes, interactive copywriting, user psychology, and more. Whereas, if you want to be a UI designer, you should be required with graphic design capabilities, excellent aesthetic skills, interface design capabilities, interactive thinking skills, and more.
If you don’t know the design tool at college, that’s all right. But you must at least master one design tool before you apply for a design internship.
Mockplus, an easy-to-use prototyping tool with a competitive price is very suitable for young designers. Especially for student designer who has not much budget. There are some highlighted features you may be interested in:
- With simple drag and drop to complete an interactive page.
- The “Table” component has the same function as Excel. It can merge cells and split cells.
- The “Repeater” and “Auto-fill” functions can save you a lot of time and cost, and improves work efficiency.
- “Timer” component can create a splash screen page easily.
- There are a large number of classic icons and vector icons for you to do a good-looking interface.
- Just one-click to generate “flow chart” and “mind map” quickly.
Students have special discounts and offers, you can learn more from here: https://www.mockplus.cn/buy/edu
4. Find your favorite APP
Figuring out your favorite app is to help you identify the design direction in the future. You can choose some of your favorites in the App store or Android market, then we can discuss the detail.
For example, you have to think about why the designer created this kind of user scenario, why do you like this design, when do you use this design? How to operate this function? You need to figure out all of these questions before interviewing. In fact, the interviewer like asking some of these questions, you need to prepare first.
5. The best place to find your internship opportunity
Indeed:
1. UX and Design Internship, Summer 2018 [June — Aug]
2. Summer 2018 Internship — UX/UI Design
3. UX/UI Product Design Internship, Summer 2018
Simplyhired：
1.User Experience Research Intern, Summer 2018
2. Digital Experience Design // DXD Intern: Summer 2018 — New York, NY
3. User Interface (UX) Design Intern
4. Summer Intern — UI/UX Design (California)
Glassdoor：
1. User Experience Designer Intern
2. UI/UX Design Intern
3. UX Designer
4. User Experience Intern (Summer)
Also, you can post your job information on LinkedIn, someone will message you if they interested in, or you can message them directly. Be polite.
6. Preparing for your financial plan
During the internship, the most important thing is to learn more and gain more design experience. It would be better to have a mentor to guide you through the whole internship. As a matter of fact, you should understand that you won’t earn much money from design internship, besides, some company will not pay you for the internship. Therefore, you need to prepare for your financial plan.
7. Choosing the big company or small company?
Working in a large company provides access to a lot of resources. They have experts in each area of business, they will help and support you. Furthermore, having a well-known company on your CV can open a lot of doors. But you can’t learn every aspect of the business and tend to only learn your small part in the full business in which you operate.
In a start-up, you are on your own. Yes, it will be incredibly hard work, long hours and poor pay for some time, but there is more potential to improve your skills and find your interests.
I think the internship is all about learning, you should not think about too much of payment and other unnecessary factors. No matter what company you choose, they will not expect how much student designers can do for the company. Hence, you should go to the one which you can learn more.
8. Do more research for the company you will be interviewed
Before you go to the interview, you need to do more research about the company. Obviously, many interviewers love to ask the questions about “why do you choose our company, what do you know about us”. On the other hand, the more you know this company, the clearer you agree with their company philosophy. It is important to share the same moral values. After all, you will stay a long time in this company.
9. Optimize your portfolio
The design portfolio is the best way to show the design skills and ability to the interviewers, a great portfolio can get you the job directly. Therefore, you need to take more time on optimizing your design portfolio.
Tips:
Only put your best works, don’t makes the interviewer question about your judgment. To create a perfect UX portfolio, this article has a detailed introduction: https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/ux-portfolio-examples.
If you need to optimize the UI portfolio, then this article will certainly help you:
https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/ui-design-portf...
There are Top 10 Free Online Portfolio Websites to Create Perfect UX/UI Design Portfolios:
Https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/free-online-por...
10. Prepare a resume
You can download a resume template from the Internet and fill in the information that shows the best quality of you. The resume must be concise and intuitive, highlighting your strengths, and don’t describe the details too much. If you have a face-to-face interview, then, your communication skills are highly valued by the interviewer. Don’t make a stupid mistake, like, impolite or plagiarism portfolio, etc.
Here are the best UI design Interview questions and answers:
20 UI Design Interview Questions and Answers You Can’t Miss Out
Tips for a successful UX interview:
5 Tips To A Successful UX Design Interview
10 Essential UI/UX Design Questions for Interview
Conclusion
Finding a design internship can be frustrating, but as long as you persist and learn, there will be great gains. I hope the above 10 top internship tips can help you.
Tips: Keep in touch with your colleagues and leaders after the design internship. Wish you all a good luck.