How to Land Internships and Research Positions as a High School Student
Before you think about what you want, whether an internship or a research position, ask yourself, what does your potential employer want?
This is a question I pose to the high school students I work with who are unsure if they can really land an internship or a research position given their age. High school students who applied the following have landed research positions normally looking for college students, and you can too potentially.
The Answer?
Every employer wants to do less work themselves while still creating high or higher quality work collectively as a team.
So what a potential applicant needs to prove is how they will be less work while signaling they will likely improve the quality of work if brought on to the team. How can an applicant do this? By answering these uncertainties through both their words and actions.
The 3 A’s You Must Articulate
The following content will apply whether you are communicating it in a cover letter or in-person in an interview. If you’re not asked to provide any of the following content, integrate it into your conversation as you demonstrate how you are low-risk and worth taking a chance on.
This assumes that you’re open to unpaid work because if you’re bright and self-driven, then the learning experience, potential recommendation, and opportunity to leverage the role to accomplish interesting and impressive work as a signal of high potential to future employers or evaluators is reward enough.
1. Availability
The most complicated and thus inconvenient part about work with students are the time ranges when they can work. This makes summer an ideal time to pursue internships and research positions, but you can also land them during the school year.
All you need to do is state:
A. What days you’re available to work.
Or at least what days you can be most responsive in your communications.
Example: I can work on Mondays and Saturdays or Sundays.
B. The time on those days you’re available to work.
Specificity creates clarity, and the clearer you are, the more certain a decision maker can be in deciding whether to say yes or no thanks to how clear what they’re saying yes or no to is.
Furthering the example above: On Mondays I can work anytime after school from 4:00–7:00 PM. On either Saturday or Sunday, I can work from 10:00 AM — 3:00 PM, whichever works better for you.
C. How much total time you can dedicate to their team and work (if A and B don’t work).
Furthering the example above: If neither of those days and times are aligned with your regular working hours, I am still prepared to dedicate 5~10 hours per week to your team and work. I will self-report the tasks I will be completing, any issues I am facing along with solutions I propose or am attempting, and updates on progress of projects and statuses of tasks.
Don’t make your employer figure out your schedule for you while they’re still considering you, before you even start. Provide it upfront and take the hassle and headache of figuring it out.
2. Ability
Free help sounds great until you’re asked by free help “so what do you want me to do?” Because it takes effort to tell someone what to do, and even more effort if you need to train them on how to do it, and even more effort if you need to give feedback on their attempts if the training wasn’t enough, and so on, and so on (don’t you feel strained just from reading about this potential process?).
Suddenly they’re not free help. They’re just free work.
So to avoid ending up as “more work,” proactively propose how you can be valuable by stating what you can offer.
At a basic level, most intelligent, academically accomplished high school students who just lack a bit of professional experience can:
- Read
- Write
- Research
- Learn skills needed by the team
For students who are involved in student clubs, there are often problems you helped solve that you can write about as a case study to share with others. The case study is essentially a problem that existed, how you tried to solve it, and what were the results of your efforts. Case studies help demonstrate your thought process and your ability to solve a problem or achieve an outcome and will also help you articulate stories you can tell during an interview. Highlight your creativity, resourcefulness, and diligence where possible.
What will be even more helpful is if you can build a portfolio of work, then showcase your sample work. This includes screenshots of flyers you designed, copies of timelines you planned in event execution, a spreadsheet you helped create in managing a project, or a guidebook you helped author for training purposes.
This is particularly impactful. A resume states in writing telling what work you can do, prompting the employer to imagine what it would be like to work with you. However, copies of files, screenshots, video walkthroughs show what it’s like work with you. It is claiming versus demonstration.
If you don’t have any skills, figure out what you want to acquire as skills and attempt to learn those on your own first. Document your learning process and what you created on your own. Now you have a portfolio.
3. Aspiration
So after communicating when you can work and what you can work on in general (or what you are willing to work on while figuring out how to do it by yourself), you explain why you want to pursue this work.
Why do you want to be a part of this team?
What is it about your potential employer’s organization, work, and achievements that inspire you?
What do you hope to contribute towards on the team?
This is showing that you understand what you’re trying to join is about.
Show that you care, that you’re not just doing this for your own benefit or advancement, because you’re not.
While an internship or research position can be beneficial for enhancing your resume and qualify you for an even greater opportunity in the future, it shouldn’t be your only reason for pursuing one. It’s a chance to be part of something bigger, to contribute alongside and with other professionals and experts.
Most people want to be understood, valued, and admired. This is you providing that for an employer.
Ultimately, this is not a guarantee you will gain a position.
But imagine how much your chances would change if you did do this. Or what if you didn’t? Or what would you chances be compared to someone who could articulate and provide all the above, but you didn’t?
Because after you met someone who can clearly communicate their availability or quantify their level of dedication, detail their offering as a team member and potential tangible contributions, and also map out an exact plan of what the future with them looks like — all while not requiring any compensation or management — wouldn’t you at least give them a chance to prove themselves, whether or not they’re in high school?
Either you’re easy to work with and can do the work, or you’re not and you can’t. Competency is competency, regardless of age.
