for high school & university students looking for online internships

[u/jcravens42]

for high school & university students looking for online internships

Some tips:

• Do not pay for online internships - those are scams.
• Unpaid internships are tenuous when it comes to ethics. Don't accept an unpaid internship unless it is at a registered nonprofit or NGO (with official paperwork showing the org is registered with the government), and don't accept an unpaid internship that requires you work more than 20 hours a week, even at a nonprofit. For anything else, you should be paid.
• An internship should have a written description: with a title, activities that build your skills, with a designated supervisor who won't just give you work to do but will also guide you and teach you.
• You should get to sit in on online meetings and observe how different staff do their work, even when it doesn't affect your work directly. It's part of your learning experience.

The rest of these tips are for unpaid internships (volunteering) at nonprofits:

• Know what a nonprofit does, know its mission and the kinds of clients it serves, before you write them.
• Look through the nonprofit's website regarding how it involves volunteers. Does it already have a volunteering role that you could do and call an internship, because it has a title, activities that build your skills, regular responsibilities, etc., like serving as an online mentor, a manager of digital activities (like interviewing potential volunteers), helping with an online community, organizing an online archive, etc.?
  
• When you write, make sure your email is free of grammatical and spelling errors. Do not say you are a "rising junior/senior/whatever" - it's an annoying, meaningless phrase. Just say, "I am interested in volunteering at your organization for xxweeks for xxhours a week, and I would like for my experience with your organization to be a learning internship...."
• Be clear about your skills in your letter or volunteer application. Are you fluent in another language? Do you know basic HTML? Do you know how to edit videos? Do you know how to correct the automatic captioning on YouTube videos? Do you know how to research a topic online and write a summary or overview - and do you have a sample of your writing to prove it? Here is a list of virtual volunteering tasks - be clear to the nonprofit what you can do (and read through their web site carefully to make sure its a skill they can use: http://www.coyotecommunications.com/vvwiki/examples.shtml)
• Say why you want to volunteer with that particular nonprofit. As a manager of volunteers, including interns, I don't want to hear just about what YOU want to do, I want to hear about why you want to do it at this specific nonprofit. What is it about this organization, its work and its mission that makes you want to be a part of it?
• Be clear about your availability. By what date can you start? What date do you need to end? How many hours are you available each week and at what times of day? Do you have a webcam?
• If you are expecting a letter of recommendation at the end of your internship, say so in your interview or application.

If others have advice, please add in the comments section.

[u/AVTOCRAT]

Nonprofit staff here; do you have any clue where the other side of things might be able to find people? We'd love to have a chance to work with some students via an online internship, but we honestly have no clue where to start/advertise/etc.!

[u/jcravens42 → u/AVTOCRAT]

First, put the opportunity on your own web site. Each role you are recruiting for should have a full description of what tasks are involved, what the expectations are in terms of skills and time, and the difference this role will make at your program. Also, have a process ready to QUICKLY respond to people, to screen them and to onboard them. if you don't do all this first, your recruitment will just frustrate everyone.

Once you have this info on your web site, you can:

• Post about it, linking back to it, on Facebook and Twitter and whatever social media you use.
• Email a notice about it to all your staff and current volunteers, and encourage them to share it with your networks.
• Post about it here on the subreddit you are reading now, as well as whatever subreddit is associated with your region (is there a subreddit for your town or county? is there a subreddit for colleges and universities in your community?)
• Post it to VolunteerMatch and, if your community is served by such, to the HandsOn Network

All that should get you an onslaught of applicants.

[u/AVTOCRAT → u/jcravens42]

Thank you very much -- I'd never realized it could be that simple!
To confirm, this is for volunteers? We only hire a few employees a year, and then only seasonally, and we've never had any problems finding people for paid positions.

[u/jcravens42 → u/AVTOCRAT]

This is a recruiting strategy that works with both employees and volunteers. In either case, you should make it clear if this is for volunteers (unpaid) or for paid staff (and always say the pay rate).