My name is Jack Harris

Inner thought, "I should have an internship by now".

You look at the date and start doing mental math of how long you think you have left.

Countless people are talking about their internships and posting about them.

It's stressful.

To give you some more context for why I started Next Level Interns, here’s my story.

Freshman year summer:

As you may know, companies like to use an internship program to attract full time hires. Therefore, many internships are restricted from younger students.

Of the over fifty internships I applied to, only three responded, and I had an interview with just one. It was with Integrity Express Logistics back in my hometown of Nashville, and gave me a chance to learn about the freight logistics industry.

Sophomore year summer:

Knowing how difficult it was the year before, I started earlier. In August, I sat down with my dad to talk through what I was looking for. 

Again, I applied to over fifty internships online, submitting resumes, answering questions, and doing HireVues. 

It was a long and tedious process, and at multiple points as I made no visible progress, I considered completely giving up. 

But one email pulled my name out of the hundreds of applicants and got me an interview with Oracle NetSuite. I was one of 10 interns across the country.

Junior Year summer:

I knew this year it was crucial to find an internship where I thought I'd want to return full time. Last January, my sister began her recruitment process with Eli Lilly and as I helped her prepare, I was blown away by their mission and how impressive their sales internship was. 

On top of this, it's one of the most competitive in the country. They recruit and choose students almost exclusively out of predetermined partner schools. Not Clemson.

After talking to more people I got even more excited about the opportunity but wasn't sure if I would get an interview.

But it was my resume, developed over the last couple years thinking critically about what I wanted to do in my career that got me the interview. This summer I'll be one of 40 sales interns across the country.

The takeaway:

It may seem like there’s not much to learn from my story. That nothing about it is very repeatable.

And that’s the tough part about finding an internship, there’s no rubric for networking, no syllabus for when you’ve completed all the coursework to get the A.

It takes consistent effort when you can’t see if you’re going anywhere. At every step on my journey I had no clue what to expect.

As I write this email in February 2024, I am completing my last year at Clemson University, and I just started my first cohort of 12 students. These students are the first Next Level Interns. 

I am walking them through a process different than anything else out there, and we are already seeing results. In under 24 hours after our first meeting, we had our first internship offer!

Continue to stay tuned for more success stories, different ways to think about the process, and simple content you can act on.