All About Internships and Work Experience Placements

[voguelover94]

hey guys this is a great thread! well im 13 and i was wondering how old do you have to be to apply for an internship?(not that im hoping to start right away.) I dont really want to work at a magazine i want to be a fashion designer. Where do you think i should intern?

 

[brianna]

hey guys this is a great thread! well im 13 and i was wondering how old do you have to be to apply for an internship?(not that im hoping to start right away.) I dont really want to work at a magazine i want to be a fashion designer. Where do you think i should intern?

i'm currently in high school and have an internship at an events planning company. my high school has a ceip class (career exploration internship program) so if yours does as well, i assume that'd be the earliest you could apply for one.

 

[BetteT]

Yeah ... usually internships are arranged by your school .. usually college but sometimes high schools have a program. In Calif. they have (or used to have) something called ROP .. which I think means Regional Occupational Program or something like that. But I've had high school students intern for me for the semester when I used to be a bank manager and they told me that students could do all kinds of different occupations.

 

[Cicciolina]

Voguelover just saw that you're in Australia. Not sure about Victoria bur it may be similar, in New South Wales you have to be 14 years and 9 months to work; but to intern/work experience, they usually are only interested when you're in grade 10 - and even then some places will still turn you down because they would rather university students. As others have mentioned go to your career counselor at school to talk about your options.

 

[quink]

Bette do you still need interns?
I have a problem, I'm dutch and I have to go on an internship for 2 weeks in an english speaking envoriment for school. Not everybody in the Netherlands has to do that, only children who have chosen to do a bilingual education. Which means half of my lessons are in English and half of them are in Dutch. You can't do this at every school in the Netherlands.

Some fellow students have family in America for example and go there, they work in companies or go to highschool for 2/3 weeks. The general idea is that you improve your English.

So my question is, does anybody have any suggestions for me? I'd love to go to the USA. New York or Los Angeles would be superr! BTW I'm only 15 soon to be 16 (only 8 days!)

 

[quink]

He guys!

I'm looking for a place were I could be an intern! It is only for 2 weeks and I'm only 15 I hope you can help me! The perfect place would be New York!

 

[Carrme]

I'll be in Paris for 4 months this may... anyone have suggestions for me? I would be a bilingual canadian student
but then im going to see my man in england sometime during that duration lol

 

[BetteT]

He guys!

I'm looking for a place were I could be an intern! It is only for 2 weeks and I'm only 15 I hope you can help me! The perfect place would be New York!

To be honest ... most internships in the U.S. last for a school semester or an entire summer because it's tied to a program in your school. Also, in exhange for the experience and what you learn, they actually expect you to do some real work (entry level stuff, but still ... something productive) and there's a learning curve with anyone new and you'd just be getting up to speed after 2 weeks. So I'm taking an educated guess here that it will be extremely difficult to find an internship that short.

I"m not in banking any more. I am a freelance stylist. I only use interns who can stay with me for at least 3 months and have their own car ... because they do a lot of errands and moving wardrobe around in addition to taking care of the wardrobe. There's not much talking anyway ... because interns work backstage and are usually alone most of the day. And my work is sporadic ... I don't work on a regular schedule, so you could be here for the 2 weeks and not have anything to do at all.

How about some sort of volunteer work? For example, at a hospital or a senior center where you help out people with simple tasks or just sit and talk to them? You might be able to do that short term and it would give you an opportunity to practice your English. Or working with a environmental group like the Sierra Club ... doing a few short projects like planting trees ... where you would be with a crew of other young people. It's not fashion ... but that is not the folcus of this assignment ... which is speaking English.

I wish you luck in finding something.

 

[quink]

Yeah that's true, that is the problem which I noticed too. So I should look for volunteer work!

Thankyou!

 

[blue.]

how hard is it to become a photographers assistant? im 19 and im willing and ready to move to new york for a career in the fashion industry.

 

[BetteT]

Most photographers assistants are photographers in their own right. They need someone who is skilled with lighting set ups, various cameras, lenses, films and digital hardware/software for photographers. They do pretty much all of that set up work plus set up backdrops and sets .... everything except taking the picture. Often, they use recent graduates of reputable high end photography schools.

 

[blue.]

dang well that sucks for me. all the experience i have is in video editing. do you know of any internships with companys that make videos for the fashion industry? thats what i'm most interested in

 

[diorable]

When applying for an internship at a magazine, do you contact HR first or do you send your resume, clips, etc to the editor of the department you want to intern at?

 

[Cicciolina]

diorable I've found it a lot more successful to contact the assistants of the departments I want to intern at rather than the editors or HR.

Imagine how many resumes HR gets! They pretty much would receive the standard "To Whom it may concern" type of cover letter, and your application of interest will most likely get lost amongst it all. The editor of the department (particularly for the larger magazines) would receive mountains of emails also and most likely won't have the time to respond to internship requests. They will either ignore it or it gets forwarded to their assistant to deal with. It's best if you find the email of the assistant and their name and address it to them specifically as most of the time (from my experience anyway) they're much more likely to reply back to let you know if they're not taking anyone and even offer some advice sometimes about wherelse to try, or in the best cases, an interview

Hope this helps!

 

[perisacooper]

Okay, I've been interning for this magazine for close to 2 months and am planning to intern for longer until I got another offer to intern for another magazine.
The magazine that I am interning for currently, is strictly a fashion and beauty magazine. It's editorials are very impressive and the stylist as well. Howver, I am not paid.
The other magazine is alright, less edgy in terms of fashion, but the fashion editor seems really keen to take me in( as shes the one who offered in the first place) and I will get paid.
Question is, do I stick to the first magazine as its more me in terms of the fashion direction, or do I expand my horizon and try interning for the other magazine?

 

[diorable]

Cicciolina, thank you so much! Some other people I talked to told me to send resumes to both the editors and HR too...should I do all three, or would that just be super annoying?
Plus, if there's more than one assistant for the same department...do you email them both? I'm so sorry if these questions seem trivial; I just want to make the best impression possible :].

 

[Cicciolina]

diorable I'm sure it wouldn't hurt sending to the HR as well. You could try the editors, you never know what will happen anyway, though so far I've never had any responses from editors because they usually forward you onto their assistants.

If there are more than one assistant, either have a look online to see who deals with the interns - on ads like ed2010 or freefashioninternships.com which I'm sure you're familiar with, as they'll have ad postings up for internships. Take a look at the older postings to determine who looks after the assistants (and also it's useful to look for emails to contact people). I actually ended up getting internships this way (less competition) as I contacted the assistants before any internship postings were put up. If you can't find it, I think you can just try emailing them all anyway.

perisacooper that's a pretty hard question. Getting paid for a magazine internship is really good! I think it's the sort of question that you have to nut out for yourself. I'm leaning towards taking the new opportunity because as you pointed out, you get paid and also you expand your horizons and expose yourself to a new company, especially if the editor already has seem to take a liking to you.

 

[diorable]

Cicciolina, ah yes, that makes a lot of sense and very helpful! I would like to apply for a summer internship...when should I email then, if I want the benefit of less competition?
Thank you so much!!

 

[Cicciolina]

Well from the looks of the ads they're still doing people to work right now and starting up Spring (which is Jan-May, right?). For Summer (June-August) I'll start writing to them about April-May I think - have a look at the old Ed2010 postings and take note when the Summer postings go up, and try about 1-2 weeks before that (or take a good guess!)
Good luck!

 

[perisacooper]

Thanks Cicciolina for replying. But do you think it's a wise move career wise? What if I jump ship and realise that the previous magazine is much better? With better editorial team etc?
I'm losing sleep over this, man! I need all the help I can get. Thanks so much...