The 4 types of internships that students overlook

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All internships are not equal.

There are obvious Fortune 500 internships and obscure startup ones. Some are hyper competitive, while others fly under the radar. Internships with formal on-campus recruiting and those that recruit for a single position on a whim.

Yet it’s easy to think about an internship as just an internship. Homogeneous and therefore deserving of the same approach.

However, from my experience recruiting for business internships and helping friends across functions/industries, I noticed that internships fall under 4 categories – each with distinct attributes that justify a tailored recruiting approach and mindset:

1. Stars
2. Staples
3. Moonshots
4. Hidden Gems

In this post, I will explain what defines each category and why you may benefit from intentionally focusing on one or two internship categories, while temporarily ignoring others.

Note: My examples skew towards business internships, but the principles apply to nearly any function or industry.

Stars – Well known firms with formal recruiting processes

Headline: The Stars are firms that come to your college campus, host info sessions, have specific application deadlines, and (usually) run interviews directly on-campus.

Examples: Each university has a distinct set of companies that are considered Stars. At UC Berkeley these included firms like PwC, Google, Bain, Deloitte, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, etc.

Discoverability and Competition: These firms invest significant budget into building their campus presence and are therefore widely recognized by students. This mass recognition breeds a very competitive environment, in which everyone is trying to land interviews and offers with the same, limited set of firms.

Other Characteristics: Most Stars tend to be well known companies with formal recruiting processes, meaning they recruit at specific times of the year in a highly structured manner. They often only interview Juniors or Seniors, however some have diversity programs that recruit younger students.

My Advice: I highly recommend getting familiar with the Stars at your university. Because these companies are so visible, they are easy to discover by clicking through your university recruiting portal, talking with friends, and exploring info sessions on campus.

Even if you don’t want to work for one of these companies, it’s worth learning about these jobs and understanding the day-to-day.

If you’re going to break away from the pack by not aspiring to work for one of these companies (and there are fantastic reasons to do so), make sure your decision is well-informed. Having a chef-like mindset is most effective when you understand the opportunities in front of you.

If your goal is to work for a Star, take note of when the interview process happens each year and start networking early. I wrote an post on why you’re too late if you waited until the information session to get to network within a big company. These firms are simply too competitive to consistently land interviews from last minute networking and resume drops.

If you’re planning to recruit for these firms in the fall of next year, you can get a leg up by starting your networking in January.

Staples – Brand name companies that slip under the radar

Headline: Staples are companies that are well known to the layman or to professionals within a particular industry. They can seem similar to Stars because they are usually large companies with many high-caliber professionals. However, they usually don’t have a massive campus presence like Stars. Because of this, Staple companies slip under the radar for most students, making them one of the best kept secrets in college recruiting.

Examples: Fortune 500 or similar well-known companies such as Procter & Gamble, Walmart, General Electric, Verizon, Levi Strauss & Company, Genentech, etc. This category also includes well-known companies in specific industries, some of which may be smaller in size. For example, reputable software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies include Mulesoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zendesk, etc.

Discoverability and Competition: These opportunities are typically not well known by students and/or are treated as backup options to Stars. While they are not particularly difficult to discover, it’s easy for Staple companies to get buried under all the hype over Stars. It's rare to find a student gunning for an internship at J.C. Penney corporate.

Other Characteristics: While many of these companies are also looking for Juniors and Seniors, they are sometimes flexible with younger students. A few also have full time rotational programs, which can be fantastic opportunities for your first full time job.

My Advice: Despite their well-known brand, Staples are ironically an overlooked categories of companies. Stars attract the most student attention, leaving a big opportunity for you to intentionally seek Staple companies. This is an especially effective strategy to build professional experience at a large company when you are early in college and have a weaker resume.

For example, I was lucky to work at Levi’s Strauss & Company as a corporate strategy analyst during the summer of my Sophomore year. This brief 3-month experience dramatically shaped my career hypothesis. Furthermore, the credibility of having a Staple company on my resume made it easier to land interviews with Stars in the following summers.

This happens because the big name company on my resume signaled to employers that I already went through a rigorous recruiting process (regardless of whether the process was actually difficult).

If your goal was to land a Star internship and you end up with a Staple, it’s not a big deal! There are countless examples of people who move from Junior year internships at Staple companies to full time offers at Stars.

If you are genuinely interested in the industry and actively network with professionals at Staple companies, you will stand out from the crowd. While everyone else is obsessed with Stars, you can take advantage of the situation by doubling down on Staples. You might even find that you prefer Staple companies over Stars for full time!

Moonshots – Highly exclusive firms that don't recruit at your university

Headline: Moonshots are exclusive companies that do not recruit on your campus, making them difficult to engage.

Examples: Sometimes, what seems like a Moonshot to you may be considered a Star at another university if they actively recruit there (aka "target schools"). As a result, all the standard Stars such as management consulting firms, investment banks, technology companies, etc. may be considered Moonshots depending on whether you attend a target school.

Other times, Moonshots don’t recruit at any universities at all because they only look for a couple of new hires and expect the best candidates to come to them.

Examples of this are: private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, secretive research and development teams, and strategy or mergers & acquisitions teams at large companies, etc.

While these types of opportunities don't regularly recruit students, you can still break in with the right approach!

Discoverability and Competition: While Moonshot companies may not be top-of-mind for peers at your university, they are hyper competitive because they attract the strongest candidates across universities.

This is because Moonshot companies are either actively recruiting at top tier universities or they only need 1 or 2 new hires and are selective about who they interview. In either scenario, the competition will be other high-caliber students.

Other Characteristics: Large Moonshot firms have formal recruiting timelines because of their on-campus recruiting at other universities. Smaller or secretive firms tend to run a low-key, 2-3 week recruiting process. For these firms, it’s especially important to network early and “be in the know” leading up to their recruiting process.

My Advice: I strongly encourage everyone to expand their internship/job search past the standard firms that recruit on campus by actively recruiting for a few Moonshot companies (if relevant to your industry of interest).

Despite being the most challenging category of internships to land offers with, there are countless examples of students from non-target universities breaking into the most exclusive, Moonshot firms.

It’s easy to discount yourself and assume that students who break in are exceptional geniuses or have insider family connections. While this is sometimes true, many are simply above-average students who hustled and set a high bar for their ambitions. If you don’t take the leap of faith and go for it, you’ll never have the chance of landing a Moonshot offer.

If you're serious about pursuing opportunities with Moonshots, start networking as soon as possible (even years in advanced is not too early). You will need to build trust with a few professionals at these firms and cultivate that relationship until you’re eligible to apply for the position.

Hidden Gems – Job opportunities without an actual job posting

Headline: If you’re limiting your career search to online job postings, you are missing 80% of job opportunities available. Many companies (especially smaller firms like startups) have an acute need to hire more employees or interns, but never get around to listing the job on a websites like LinkedIn or university career pages.

Just because the job posting doesn't exist does not mean that the job opportunity doesn't exist. I wrote an extensive guide on finding hidden job opportunities.

Examples: I’ve found that many hidden job opportunities exist within startups or small teams at larger companies. Startups with hidden opportunities may be relatively big with a few hundred employees such as Udacity, Flexport, and Slack. They can also be very small with less than 50 employees. While startups are often synonymous with technology, you can find them in every industry imaginable.

Discoverability and Competition: There are many startups and big company teams that are open to hiring interns. The tricky part is that these companies are not explicitly asking for interns. To find these opportunities, you need to reach out and ask them to consider you for a position without knowing if they actually need help.

The advantage of Hidden Gems is that there is little competition because most people are not reaching out to companies without job postings. And because of the vast pool of hidden opportunities with very few applicants, these opportunities are relatively easy to land.

Other Characteristics: Hidden Gems are fantastic for your first few professional experiences because these companies are open to motivated and proactive students regardless of age or experience. The only drawback is that these opportunities are sometimes unpaid, especially if you don’t have much prior experience.

My Advice: Hidden Gem opportunities are how I — and most of my friends — found our first few internships. By landing an internship early in my college career, I was able to test and iterate on my career hypotheses through the remaining 4 years.

Many Freshmen and Sophomores gravitate towards taking summer classes to stay busy. Instead, you could line up a Hidden Gem internship. In the most cases, this will allow you to learn about yourself, your preferences, and your interests significantly faster than through an extra class.

Concluding thoughts on internships

As you can see, there are nuances about each internship category that require a customized approach.

You can dramatically increase your chances of finding a great internship by focusing on opportunities that are the best fit for your level of experience today, while setting yourself up for success in the future.

Less experienced, younger students may find that it makes sense to zone-in on Hidden Gems for the short term, while networking with Stars and Moonshots for the long term.

Conversely, more experienced students may decide to invest the majority of their time into Stars and a minority of their time into Staples. This allows them to hedge against striking out with Stars.

Unfortunately, many students don’t take a focused approach and rely on “spray and pray”, which entails applying to hundreds of online job postings within a short period of time. This usually results in receiving hundreds of rejections as well.

It’s better to have a clear, focused perspective on the types of opportunities you want to target based off your professional interests and prior experience.

Afterwards, you can come up with a game plan and execute. Send cold emails, network with professionals, apply for specific opportunities, etc. Do everything possible to keep pushing for an internship in a focused manner.

Let me know what you think in the comments below! Have you had internship experiences that map to one of the four categories?

This article was originally posted on 2 by 22. Subscribe to 2 by 22 for direct access to my bi-weekly guides and thoughts on career development for students.

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