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You may have learned the basics of finding internships in this post. But with competition high, sometimes traditional application methods aren’t enough. Here are ideas for out-of-the-box ways you can find an internship.

Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social networking sites are ubiquitous on college campuses. But instead of using them to play Farmville and share pics, have you thought about social media as a means of getting an internship? Tiffany Lee did.  Tiffany, a finance and economics major at the University of Delaware, messaged the fashion company Kimberly Taylor via Facebook and explained how much she wanted to intern there. She went a step further with social media and wrote a blog post about the company on her personal blog.  The effort paid off. This summer, Tiffany will combine her interests in fashion and finance working as an accounting intern at Kimberly Taylor.

Social media seems to be an underused way to find internships. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 91% of college seniors surveyed have at least one profile on a social networking site.  Only 15% of them claimed to have used social networking as a way to research employers.  So, connecting with a company about a potential internship over social media could make you stand out.

Personal Connections

Social media is a great way to build your network, but when looking for internships, don’t forget the people you already know.  Naresh Vissa, who studies broadcast journalism, finance and accounting at Syracuse University, reached out to someone in his existing network. In high school, he sold ads for the school paper and encountered executives from a company called Biz Radio Networks. Naresh kept in touch with the Executive Vice President and after his freshman year of college, Biz Radio offered him an internship as a producer.

This Wall Street Journal article also talks about the importance of connections to finding internships. Marina Tsipenyuk, who graduated from Rutgers University earlier this year, had tried the usual ways of getting a finance internship without luck.  Her mother, who worked at Warner Music Group, gave Marina’s resume to a friend in the royalties department.  That connection and the introduction that followed helped Marina land an internship working on finance reports for the music company.

With a little ingenuity, you can think beyond job boards and your campus career center and come up with clever ways to find an internship.

By Danielle Bullen