Category: Internships

Most rejected internship applications are not rejected on merit. They are rejected because the email was obviously a mass mailing, arrived at the wrong time of year, asked for something impossible, or contained a mistake that made the reader stop. Almost all of it is avoidable.

The mass email

The most common reason, by a distance. An email that opens “Respected Sir/Madam” with no name, praises “your esteemed organisation”, and never mentions anything specific about the chamber or firm is recognisable immediately, because the reader has seen forty of them this month.

The fix is one accurate sentence showing you know who you are writing to. Their practice area, the court they appear in, a matter you read about. One sentence is enough, and it has to be true, because a wrong guess is worse than nothing.

The worst version is the email where the previous recipient’s name is still in it. This happens weekly and it ends the application instantly.

Wrong time of year

Chambers and firms plan intern intake in advance, and the popular windows fill early. Writing in the first week of May for a June internship, when everyone else wrote in February, means the slots are gone regardless of how good you are.

Apply well ahead, and be specific about your dates. Exactly how far ahead varies by organisation and city, so where a firm publishes an application window, follow it, and where it does not, ask early rather than late.

Asking for something that does not exist

Asking a two person chamber for a three month internship, or a litigation chamber for corporate transactional experience, or any organisation for something during a period when the courts are closed, signals that you did not think about it.

Keep your request within what the Bar Council rules contemplate as well. Under Rule 25, an internship in any year is not to run continuously for more than four weeks, so a request for eight continuous weeks creates a problem for whoever has to sign your certificate.

CV problems that cause rejection

• Padding. A one week court visit listed as an internship, a webinar listed as a course, a participation certificate listed as an achievement. Experienced readers decode this instantly.
• Inflated verbs. “Drafted a writ petition” when you proofread one. If you cannot answer two questions about it, do not claim it.
• Length. Three pages from a second year student. One page until you genuinely need two.
• Design. Columns, icons, skill bars and photographs. Law firms want plain text they can read quickly.
• No dates. Internships without months and years look like something is being concealed, and sometimes something is.
• Typos. In a profession whose entire output is documents, a typo on page one is evidence.

The email itself

Subject lines like “Request”, “Internship” or “Seeking opportunity” give the reader nothing. “Internship application: [name], [year], [college]” can be acted on without opening it.

Other reliable ways to lose an application: writing from an address you made at fifteen, attaching a Word file that opens differently on the reader’s machine, attaching five documents when two were asked for, writing three paragraphs about your passion for justice before saying what you want, and asking about the stipend before you have been offered anything.

Sending the same email again two days later, because you heard nothing, is also fatal. One follow up after a week is right. Two is too many.

Things in your control that students treat as luck

No writing sample. Most applications contain no evidence of what the applicant can actually produce, which means the reader is choosing on college name and CV formatting alone. A case comment, a research note or a published article changes that. If you have nothing to send, write something: Lexfolio publishes student writing free through its guest article programme, and a published piece is a stronger attachment than another certificate.

Not following the instructions in the posting. If it asks for a cover letter, a specific subject line, or submission through a form, do exactly that. Firms use it as a filter, deliberately.

Applying only to the best known names. Fifteen applications to the biggest firms and none to the chambers and smaller firms where you would actually be given work is a common and expensive pattern, particularly in first and second year.

Matching the application to the place

A firm’s recruitment team and a two person chamber want different things, and sending both the same application loses one of them. Firms run a process: they want the format followed, the cover letter attached if asked, and the dates within their published window. A chamber wants a short, human email from someone who knows what the advocate does.

The same applies to NGOs, where the usual mistake is writing about career development rather than about the work the organisation does, and to companies, where legal teams want to see some interest in the industry rather than in law generally.

Improving the next batch

If twenty applications produce nothing, the problem is almost never that twenty separate people independently judged you unsuitable. It is more often one fixable thing repeated twenty times: the same weak subject line, the same generic second paragraph, the same CV with no writing sample attached, or the wrong month.

Before the next batch, change one variable and keep count. Show the email to someone who has already done internships and ask them where they would have stopped reading. Read your own CV as a stranger and mark every line that makes a claim you could not support in an interview. Both exercises are uncomfortable and both work faster than sending another twenty.

What rejection usually is not

Silence is not always a judgement on you. Advocates miss emails, chambers fill up, firms pause intake, and a great many applications simply go unanswered for no reason connected to the applicant. Students read silence as a verdict and it mostly is not one.

The right response is volume and persistence rather than agonising: a dozen carefully written applications to places that fit, one follow up each, and then the next batch. The students who end up with good internships are rarely the ones who wrote the single perfect email.

Sometimes, but not usually after one internship, and nobody can promise you otherwise. The realistic path at most Indian law firms is a sequence: a first internship, a call back for a second, and only then a position where the firm is deliberately assessing whether to make you an offer. Understanding that sequence is more useful than any amount of advice about making a good impression.

How the sequence actually runs

Large firms take a great many interns and make comparatively few offers. A first internship is mostly an audition for a second one. The intern who is asked to return has usually done unremarkable work very reliably, rather than something spectacular once.

The second internship is where you become a known quantity. People remember your name, you are given work that matters a little more, and someone senior may now have an opinion about you.

An assessment internship, where firms run one, is an internship the firm has explicitly flagged as an evaluation for a possible pre placement offer. Not every firm uses the term and the practice varies, so do not assume your internship is one unless you have been told it is.

A pre placement offer, or PPO, is a job offer made before campus recruitment, usually to someone who has interned with that firm more than once. Offers after a single internship happen, but they are the exception and you should not plan around them.

What actually improves your odds

Ask to come back, explicitly. This is the single most underused step. Before you leave, ask the person you reported to whether you may apply again for a later period, and whether they would be willing to have you. Many second internships exist only because the intern asked.

Be reliable on small things. Work delivered when promised, in the format asked for, proofread. Over four weeks this compounds into a reputation, and a reputation for reliability is what gets you remembered when someone is asked whether to call you back.

Pick a team and stay with it. Interning across four different practice areas at the same firm gives four people a vague impression of you. Three internships with the same team gives one team a clear one, and it is the clear one that produces offers.

Ask for feedback mid way, not at the end. At the end it is a formality. In week two it gives you a fortnight to act on it, and it signals that you are paying attention.

Learn how the team works. How they format a note, how they cite, what the partner’s preferences are. Matching the house style on your second week is noticed more than you would expect.

What does not work

Trying to be visible. Interns who look for chances to speak in meetings or send unsolicited opinions on a matter are remembered, but not usefully. The work is the visibility.

Staying very late to be seen staying late. Everyone recognises it, and it is read as inefficiency rather than commitment.

Asking about a PPO during the internship. It makes the people around you uncomfortable, because mostly they do not decide it, and it reframes everything you have done as transactional.

Collecting certificates. Six one week internships at six places is a weaker CV than two four week internships where somebody can actually vouch for you. Recruiters read the pattern, and the pattern says you have never stayed anywhere long enough to be given real work.

If you are in litigation rather than a firm

The path is different and less formal. Chambers do not run assessment internships or make pre placement offers. What happens instead is that a junior position opens, and the senior thinks of someone they have worked with and trusted.

So the mechanism is the same underneath: be the intern they remember, stay in touch after you leave without being a nuisance, and make sure the person knows when you are going to be looking. A message once or twice a year, when you have something genuine to say, keeps you in mind.

The honest part

Plenty of very good students intern repeatedly at a firm and receive no offer, for reasons that have nothing to do with them: the team did not have a vacancy that year, the practice area contracted, the budget changed. Hiring numbers move with the market, and in a slow year excellent interns are turned down.

This is worth saying plainly because students take it personally and conclude they were not good enough. Treat the internship as something that gave you skills, a referee and a sample of work, all of which you keep regardless of the outcome. Those three things are what get you the next position, whether or not this firm makes you an offer.

Timing, if you are aiming for an offer

Work backwards from when the firm recruits. If a firm makes offers to final year students before campus season, your second and third internships need to have happened by then, which means the planning starts in your third year rather than your fifth. Students who leave all their firm internships to the final year often find they have run out of chances to be called back.

Vacation periods are when firms take the most interns and also when competition is heaviest. Interning during term, where your university allows it, can mean a smaller intake and more attention, though you have to check your own college’s rules on attendance first.

In house teams work differently

A company’s legal team is not a law firm. Intakes are smaller, often one or two interns at a time, and there is frequently no structured offer process at all because the team hires when someone leaves rather than on an annual cycle.

The useful consequence is that being remembered matters even more, and that a speculative message six months later, when you are actually looking, is both acceptable and sometimes effective. The unhelpful consequence is that you cannot plan around it, so treat an in house internship as experience and a referee rather than a route to a job.

What to do with the time either way

Keep every piece of work you are allowed to keep, redacted properly. A research note you wrote is a writing sample for every future application. Keep a one line record of each matter you worked on, because in two years you will not remember, and interviewers ask.

Build something that does not depend on anyone’s hiring plans: published writing, a subject you actually know well, a skill like drafting that transfers anywhere. Those are yours.

A recommendation letter is useful when it is specific and nearly useless when it is not. The difference is mostly decided by you, not by the person signing it, because a referee who is given nothing will write three generic paragraphs in ten minutes. This is how to ask so that you get the other kind.

Whom to ask

Ask the person who supervised your actual work, even if they are junior. An associate who read six of your research notes can say something concrete. A managing partner who met you twice can only say that you were punctual and eager, and every reader knows what that means.

Seniority helps only when the person can also say something real. Given a choice between a vague letter from a well known senior advocate and a detailed one from the junior you reported to, the detailed one does more for you in most situations.

For academic applications, a professor who taught you in a seminar and marked your papers is worth more than one who lectured a hall of two hundred.

When to ask

Ask near the end of the internship, in person if you can, while the work is fresh. Asking eight months later means reminding someone of work they have forgotten, and the letter shows it.

Give at least two weeks before any deadline, more during court vacations and firm busy periods. If you need it in three days, say so plainly and apologise for the notice, rather than hiding it at the end of the email.

Ask in person first, then follow up by email with the material. “Would you be comfortable writing a recommendation for me” gives a graceful way to decline, which is what you want. A lukewarm letter from someone who felt cornered is worse than no letter.

What to send with the request

This is the part most students skip and it is the part that decides the quality of the letter. Send one email containing:

• The dates you interned and whom you worked with.
• Three or four things you actually did, named specifically: the matters, the kind of work, anything you produced.
• What the letter is for, and to whom it is addressed. A letter for a firm application reads differently from one for an LL.M.
• The deadline and the format. Signed PDF, letterhead, uploaded by the referee directly, or handed to you.
• Your CV, attached.

You are not writing the letter for them. You are making it possible for them to write a good one without opening old files.

Sample request email

Subject: Request for a recommendation letter, Ananya Rao, intern June 2026

Respected Ma’am,

Thank you again for the four weeks in your chamber in June. I learned a great deal, particularly from sitting through the bail matters.

I am applying for an internship with [organisation] in January and the application asks for a letter of recommendation. Would you be comfortable writing one for me? If you would rather not, please do say so, and I will understand entirely.

In case it helps, a short reminder of the work I did:

• Prepared chronologies and case notes for three criminal appeals, including the [subject] matter.
• Researched the position on default bail under Section 187 of the BNSS and prepared a four page note with the leading authorities.
• Proofread and tabbed briefs for filing, and sat through hearings in the High Court on most days.

The letter is addressed to [name and organisation] and is due by [date]. They have asked for a signed PDF on letterhead, which I can submit myself, or you may email it directly to [address] if you prefer.

My CV is attached for reference. Thank you for considering this.

Yours sincerely,

Ananya Rao

What makes a letter worth having

A letter that helps says three things. It says how the referee knows you and for how long, so the reader can weigh it. It gives at least one specific example of your work, because a specific example is the only thing that distinguishes you from the other applicants with letters. And it makes a clear comparative statement the referee is willing to stand behind.

A letter that does nothing uses words like sincere, hardworking, punctual and eager to learn, mentions no particular piece of work, and could be about any intern of the last five years. Readers discount these almost entirely, which is why the material you send matters so much.

If you are asked to draft it yourself

This happens often in Indian practice, usually because the person is busy rather than uninterested. Write it honestly, in their voice rather than yours, and keep the claims to what they actually observed. Send it as a draft they can change, and do not be offended if they rewrite it entirely. Never sign anything on someone else’s behalf, and never submit a letter they have not seen in final form.

Afterwards

Thank them when they send it, and tell them the outcome either way. A referee who hears that you got the place is far more willing the next time, and a referee who hears nothing for two years reasonably assumes they are being used.

Keep a copy of every letter you receive, with the date. Not to reuse without asking, but because referees move, retire and become unreachable, and a scanned letter on file is sometimes all you will have.

Nobody expects you to know any law in your first week. They expect you to turn up on time, take an instruction accurately, ask when you are stuck, and keep what you see to yourself. Interns are judged almost entirely on reliability in the first week, and almost not at all on brilliance.

The first morning

Reach early. Courts and chambers run on a schedule you do not control, and an advocate leaving for a 10.30 listing will not wait for you. Carry a notebook and a pen, because typing while someone speaks reads as inattention in most Indian chambers, and your phone will be in your pocket in court anyway.

Ask three questions on day one and then stop asking administrative things: what time should I reach, whom do I report to when you are in court, and is there a dress code beyond the obvious. Dark formals and covered shoes are safe everywhere.

Taking an instruction

This is the skill that separates interns who get called back from interns who do not. When you are given work, get four things before you leave the room:

1. What exactly is wanted. A note? A list of cases? A draft? A one line answer?
2. By when. “End of day” means different things to different people. Ask for a time.
3. How long it should be. One page or ten changes the entire approach.
4. Where to look. Is there a file, a previous matter, a judgment to start from?

Then repeat it back in one sentence before you go. “So, a two page note on whether a Section 34 petition filed after the ninety day period can be condoned, with the leading authorities, by five this evening.” Thirty seconds of confirmation saves a day of work on the wrong question, and the wrong question is the commonest reason intern work is discarded.

When you are stuck

Work at it for an hour. If you are still stuck, ask, and ask properly: say what you were asked, what you have found, where you have looked, and what the specific obstacle is. “I could not find anything” is not a report. “I searched for High Court authority on this point in the last five years and found only two cases, both distinguishable because they concern government contracts, so I wanted to check whether I should widen it” is a report.

Interns who disappear for two days and produce nothing are remembered badly. Interns who ask a sensible question on the second afternoon are not.

Confidentiality, and the social media rules

Everything you see in a chamber or a firm is confidential. Client names, the facts of a matter, what was said in a conference, what is in a draft, what strategy was discussed. This is not a formality. It is the thing that will end an internship fastest.

The Bar Council of India issued a circular on 17 July 2026 regulating social media use by advocates, law students and interns, and it is stricter than most students realise. As reported by LiveLaw, the circular requires each student to sign a separate undertaking before every internship, which becomes part of their institutional record, and law schools are to maintain a register of those undertakings.

Under the circular, interns are not to record, photograph or publish material about court proceedings, client conferences, case files, pleadings, briefs, chambers or court visits. It specifically targets “day in a chamber”, “internship reveal”, “courtroom drama” and “lawyer life” style reels, and it prohibits using the internship, court corridors, chambers, robes, or the identity of the supervising advocate, judge or firm for social media or personal branding. Posting photographs in robes or inside court buildings in a way that breaches professional decorum is covered too, as are AI generated images or deepfakes of judges, advocates or proceedings.

The stated consequences include withdrawal of the internship, reporting to your law school or the State Bar Council, and other disciplinary action. So the short version is: do not post about your internship while you are doing it. A LinkedIn line at the end saying where you interned and what area of work you did is a different matter from a reel shot in a court corridor.

What the work will actually be

In a litigation chamber, expect case research, preparing chronologies, summarising judgments, proofreading drafts, tabbing and arranging briefs, and a great deal of sitting in court watching matters that are over in ninety seconds. In a firm, expect document review, research notes, updating trackers, and summarising contracts.

Some of this is dull. All of it is how the work gets done, and the intern who tabs a brief carefully is more useful than the one who wanted to argue the matter. Court observation is worth more than it feels like at the time: watch how an experienced advocate opens, how they handle a question from the bench, and what happens when they are unprepared.

Small things that are noticed

• Citing a case you have not read. Read the judgment, not the headnote, and never the summary alone.
• Submitting work without reading it once more. Typos in an intern’s note suggest the research was done the same way.
• Saying you have finished when you have not started the last part.
• Phone out during a conference or in court.
• Asking about a certificate in week one. It will come at the end if you earn it.
• Not knowing basic facts of the matter you have been working on for a week.

At the end

Ask for feedback once, near the end, in person, and take it without defending yourself. “Is there anything I should do differently in my next internship” is a better question than “how did I do”, because it invites something specific.

If you want to come back, say so plainly before you leave, and ask whether you may write again for a later period. Most people say yes to an intern who was reliable, and that one sentence is how second internships happen.

If you cannot get a chamber internship this cycle, written work still builds the sample you will need for the next application. Lexfolio runs a four week virtual internship where the work is researched and written for publication, which is one way to have something to show.

A cover letter is the formal document you attach when a firm or organisation has advertised an internship and asked for one. It is not the same thing as the email you send it with, and the commonest mistake is writing the same words twice. The email is the envelope. The letter is the application.

When you actually need one

You need a cover letter when the posting asks for one, when you are applying to an organisation with a formal recruitment process such as a large firm, a company’s legal team, an NGO with funded positions, or a government or regulatory body. You do not need one when writing a short cold email to an advocate’s chamber, where a letter attached to a three line email looks stiff.

If the posting asks for a “statement of purpose” or “statement of interest”, that is a cover letter with a different name.

What goes in, in order

1. Your details and the date, top right or top left, consistently.
2. The addressee, by name where you can find it, with the organisation and city.
3. A subject line. “Application for internship, general corporate team, November 2026.”
4. Opening paragraph: who you are and what you are applying for. Two sentences.
5. Second paragraph: why this organisation. The paragraph that gets skipped and should not be.
6. Third paragraph: what you have actually done, with evidence.
7. Fourth paragraph: what you want to learn, and your dates.
8. Close. One line.

One page. A second page will not be read.

A full sample

Priya Nair, fourth year, B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), Gujarat National Law University

priya.nair@example.com, +91 XXXXXXXXXX

14 October 2026

Ms Kavita Desai, Recruitment Team, [Firm name], Mumbai

Subject: Application for internship, dispute resolution team, 5 to 30 January 2027

Dear Ms Desai,

I am a fourth year student at Gujarat National Law University and I am applying for an internship with the firm’s dispute resolution team for four weeks from 5 January 2027.

My interest is in arbitration, and specifically in the enforcement stage. I spent last summer at a chamber in Ahmedabad working on two applications under Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, where my job was to prepare the chronology and summarise the award and the objections. What I took from it was how much of the argument is settled by the record rather than by the law, and I would like to see how that looks from the other side of a larger practice.

In college I am an editor of the law review, where I review three to four submissions a month and have learned to cut other people’s writing without losing their argument. I was part of the team that reached the quarter finals of the [name] arbitration moot in 2026, where I argued the jurisdictional half of the case. My CV sets out the rest, and I have attached a research note I wrote on the public policy ground under Section 34 as a writing sample.

I am available from 5 to 30 January and can start earlier if that suits the team better. I would be glad to be considered for a later period if January is already full.

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Priya Nair

Why each paragraph is there

The opening tells the reader what they are holding. Recruitment teams read dozens of these in a sitting and they are looking first for the team and the dates.

The second paragraph is the one that does the work. Notice that it does not praise the firm. It says what the writer is interested in, gives evidence that the interest is real, and names something she actually learned. A sentence about the firm’s “stellar reputation” and “esteemed position in the legal fraternity” says nothing, and every reader knows it was pasted.

The third paragraph gives evidence with specifics: how many submissions a month, which half of the moot she argued. “Excellent research and communication skills” is a claim. “I review three to four submissions a month” is a fact, and the reader draws the conclusion themselves, which is more persuasive.

The fourth removes the obstacles: dates, flexibility, and an easy alternative to saying no outright.

Formatting

• PDF. Named with your own name, not “cover letter”.
• One page, 11 or 12 point, a plain serif or sans serif face.
• No letterhead, no logo, no photograph unless asked.
• No coloured text and no design flourishes. This is not a design portfolio.
• Proofread it twice, then read it aloud once. Reading aloud catches the sentences that do not work.

What to do when you have little to put in it

First and second year students often feel they have nothing to write in the third paragraph. You have more than you think: a moot, a research paper, a college legal aid cell, a published article, a language you read bare acts in, work you did for a family business.

What you should not do is inflate. A claim to have “assisted in drafting a writ petition” when you proofread one is the kind of thing that collapses in thirty seconds if someone asks about it, and the person reading your letter has drafted many writ petitions.

If the honest answer is that you have not done much yet, write a shorter letter and make the second paragraph carry the weight. Genuine, specific interest in a subject is persuasive from a first year student in a way that a padded CV is not.

One letter per application

You can keep a skeleton, but the second paragraph has to be rewritten every time, because it is the only part that cannot be reused. A letter that mentions the wrong firm’s name is not a small error, and it happens often enough that recruitment teams look for it.

Most internships with advocates and smaller firms in India are not advertised anywhere. You get them by writing directly to someone who has never heard of you. A good cold email is short, says exactly who you are and what you want, and makes it easy to say yes. Below is the structure, then two complete samples.

Before you write anything

Find out who you are writing to. An email addressed to a chamber, with no name, reads like a mass mailing, because it usually is one. Look up the advocate’s practice area, the court they appear in, or the firm’s recent work. One accurate sentence showing you looked is worth more than a paragraph of praise.

Decide your dates before you write. “I am available whenever convenient” puts the work of planning on the person you are asking for a favour. Give a window: a fortnight, a month, the period between your exams and the next semester.

Check your university’s requirement too. Under Rule 25 of the Bar Council of India’s legal education rules, a five year course requires twenty weeks of internship across the degree and a three year course requires twelve, and no single internship in a year is to run continuously for more than four weeks. At least one internship has to be with trial and appellate advocates. That rule shapes what you should be asking for.

The structure that works

1. Subject line. State the request plainly: “Internship application: [your name], [year], [college]”. Not “Seeking an opportunity” and not “Request”.
2. One line on who you are. Year, course, college. Nothing else.
3. One line on why this person. Specific. Their practice area, a matter you read about, the court they appear in.
4. Your dates. Exact, and flexible within reason.
5. What you can do. Research, drafting, note preparation, case summaries. Be honest about your level.
6. What is attached. CV, and a writing sample if you have one worth sending.
7. A short close. No “eagerly awaiting your positive response”.

The whole thing should fit on a phone screen without scrolling. If it does not, cut it.

Sample 1: to a senior advocate’s chamber

Subject: Internship application: Ananya Rao, third year, NLU Jodhpur

Respected Sir,

I am a third year student of the five year B.A. LL.B. programme at National Law University, Jodhpur.

I am writing to ask whether you would consider taking an intern in your chamber for four weeks between 2 and 30 June. I have been reading the recent criminal appeals before the High Court and I am particularly interested in bail jurisprudence after the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita came into force, which is an area your chamber appears before the court on regularly.

I can help with case research, preparing briefs and summaries of judgments, and proofreading drafts. I have completed one previous internship with a litigation chamber at the district court, where I mostly prepared case notes.

My CV is attached, along with a short case comment I wrote on a recent High Court judgment.

I would be grateful for the opportunity. If the dates do not suit, I am happy to work around your convenience.

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Ananya Rao, third year, B.A. LL.B. (Hons.), National Law University, Jodhpur, +91 XXXXXXXXXX

Sample 2: to a law firm

Subject: Internship application: Rohit Menon, fourth year, Symbiosis Pune, Nov to Dec 2026

Dear Ms Iyer,

I am a fourth year student at Symbiosis Law School, Pune, applying for a four week internship with the firm’s general corporate team between 17 November and 12 December.

I am interested in transaction work rather than disputes. In my last internship I assisted on due diligence for a share purchase, mostly reviewing and summarising contracts and flagging change of control clauses, so I have some sense of what the work involves and how a data room is organised.

I have attached my CV and a redacted sample of a contract summary I prepared during that internship.

If the team is not taking interns for those weeks, I would be glad to be considered for a later period.

Thank you for considering this.

Kind regards,

Rohit Menon, fourth year, B.B.A. LL.B., Symbiosis Law School, Pune, +91 XXXXXXXXXX

Attachments

Send a PDF, never a Word file, and name it properly: Rohit-Menon-CV.pdf, not cv final final (2).pdf. Keep the CV to one page until you have enough to justify two.

A writing sample helps more than most students expect, because it is the only evidence in the whole application of what you can actually produce. A case comment, a research note or a published piece all work. If you have nothing, write something. Lexfolio’s guest article programme publishes student writing free, and a published piece with your byline is a stronger attachment than a certificate.

Following up

Wait a week, then send one short reply on the same thread. Two lines is enough: “I wrote last week about an internship between 2 and 30 June. I understand you may not be taking interns, and I would be grateful to know either way.”

Then stop. A second follow up irritates people and a third gets you remembered for the wrong reason. Silence is an answer in Indian legal practice, and a disappointing number of applications simply go unanswered.

How many to send

More than you think, and each one written separately. Students who send forty identical emails get fewer replies than students who send twelve tailored ones, because the identical ones are obvious. The giveaway is usually the opening: a sentence that could be addressed to anyone was addressed to everyone.

Keep a simple list of who you wrote to, on what date, and whether you followed up. You will lose track otherwise, and writing twice to the same person with the same email is a bad look.

Things that sink an otherwise good email

• Addressing a woman advocate as “Sir”. It happens constantly and it is noticed.
• “Respected Sir/Madam” with no name, when the name is on the firm’s website.
• Asking what the stipend is in the first email. Ask once you have an offer.
• Attaching five documents. CV and one sample.
• Writing from an email address you invented in school.
• Claiming an interest in a practice area you cannot say two sentences about if asked.

None of this is complicated. The students who get internships are mostly the ones who wrote a clear, specific, unembarrassing email to the right person at the right time of year, and then wrote to twenty more.

Remote internships are genuine and widely offered in India. They are also the format most used by fraudsters, because there is no office to visit and no person to meet. This page covers both: how to get a real one, and how to recognise a fake before you lose money.

The rule that settles most cases

A legitimate employer does not ask an intern for money. Not for registration, not for training materials, not for an assessment, not for a background check, not as a refundable security deposit, not for a certificate. If money is being asked of you, it is not an internship.

The terms of the AICTE National Internship Portal, the government’s own internship platform, prohibit any student fee, whether for applying, for selection or for placement. Registration there is free, and AICTE’s guidance states that any site charging a fee in its name is fraudulent.

The warning signs

• Any request for payment, in any form, at any stage.
• An offer with no interview. Real employers want to speak to you, even briefly.
• Applications routed through Google Forms, WhatsApp or a payment link rather than the organisation’s own process.
• Payment to a personal UPI handle, a QR code or a wallet. No real employer collects money this way.
• An email domain that is slightly wrong. Scammers register lookalike domains with a changed or added character, and use generic addresses on free mail services.
• Requests for your Aadhaar, card photographs or bank details during an application.
• A guaranteed stipend or a guaranteed job after paying a fee.
• Manufactured urgency, such as a deadline hours away, or pressure to pay before a place is lost.
• Unsolicited personalised messages offering you a role you never applied for.
• Unrealistic pay for work requiring no experience.

Four checks before you reply

1. The website. Does the organisation have one, does it work, and is it more than a single page? Is the contact email on its own domain rather than a free service?
2. The people. Search the company on LinkedIn. Does it have employees with real histories, or no presence at all?
3. The registration. Legitimate Indian companies have a corporate identification number, and many display a GST number. These appear on official documents and often on the website.
4. The platform’s own record. On Internshala, open the company profile and read its past postings and any feedback from previous interns.

Internshala advises exactly these checks and provides a complaint option to report a suspicious listing. If a company asks for payment, stop communicating with it and report it.

What the frauds actually look like

Reported patterns in India include listings that copy a well known company’s branding and website, offers made without any interview, and requests for a fee for training materials or an online assessment. Documented cases include a demand for about ten thousand rupees for a certification course and a screening fee of about five thousand rupees for an internship advertised on social media.

A second pattern is the work from home variant, where a student is told to buy software or paid training, and then receives either irrelevant tasks or none at all. A third is straightforward data harvesting, where the application exists only to collect identity documents and bank details.

If you have already paid

Act the same day, because the chance of recovering money falls quickly.

1. Call 1930, the national cybercrime helpline, and ask for a hold on the transaction.
2. File a report at cybercrime.gov.in, the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal.
3. Tell your bank and ask what can be done at their end.
4. Report the listing to the platform it appeared on.
5. Tell your college placement cell, because the same fraud is usually targeting your classmates too.

Do not send more money for any reason, including a promised refund or a release fee. That is a standard second stage of the same fraud.

Finding real remote internships

Having covered the frauds, the genuine ones are not hard to find.

• Internshala lists a large number of work from home internships, filterable by field and duration.
• LinkedIn carries remote roles and lets you verify the employer in the same place.
• The AICTE National Internship Portal at internship.aicte-india.org is free and includes remote listings.
• Organisations you already follow. Many small publishers, research outfits and startups take remote interns and announce it only on their own site or social accounts.

Judging whether a real one is worth it

Remote internships vary more in quality than in office ones, because supervision is harder. Before accepting, ask who reviews your work and how often, whether there is a fixed deliverable, and how many hours a week are expected. An honest answer to the first question tells you most of what you need to know.

Many remote internships are unpaid, particularly content and research roles. That is not in itself a warning sign, but it should change what you expect in return: if you are not being paid, you should at least be getting feedback, a named supervisor and something you can show afterwards. If none of those are on offer, there is little reason to take it.

One honest example of the format

For law students, Lexfolio runs a remote virtual internship in which interns write legal content that is published under their own name, with editing and a certificate at the end. It is free to apply, it charges nothing at any stage, and it is listed here as an illustration of what the format looks like when it is run properly: a named deliverable, a review step, and no money asked of the intern at any point.

Everyone applying for a first internship has no experience, including the people who get them. What separates applicants at this stage is not experience but evidence: something concrete you have made, organised or finished that a stranger can look at. This page is about producing that quickly and then applying in a way that gets replies.

Start by accepting what the first one is for

Your first internship is not meant to be impressive. It is meant to give you something true to write on the second application. A small company nobody has heard of, where you do real work, is worth more than a famous name where you sit in a corner. Students who hold out for a prestigious first internship often end up with none at all.

What goes on an empty CV

You almost certainly have more than you think. Go through each of these honestly:

• College work with an outcome. A project, a paper, a presentation that someone other than your examiner saw.
• Organising anything. A fest, an event, a society, a sports team. Say how many people and how much money.
• Competitions. Entered counts, not only won. Say what you had to produce.
• Anything you built or ran. A page, an account, a small shop, a tutoring arrangement, a family business you actually helped with.
• Skills you can prove on demand. Spreadsheets, a language, a design tool, writing.

Write each as what you did, what changed, and the number. “Member of the college fest committee” is a line nobody reads. “Coordinated 40 volunteers and the registration desk for a 3 day fest with 1,200 attendees” is a line that produces a question in an interview, which is the entire purpose of a CV.

If there is genuinely nothing, make something in three weeks

This is the fastest way out of the problem, and almost nobody does it.

1. Pick the field you want the internship in.
2. Produce one piece of real work in it. For marketing, run a page for a month and report what happened. For finance, build a model of a listed company from its published annual report. For HR, write a hiring process for a small firm. For writing, publish three pieces somewhere public.
3. Write up what you did and what you learned, in one page.
4. Attach it to every application.

A hiring manager choosing between forty identical CVs and one applicant who turned up with a piece of work is not making a difficult decision. The work does not have to be good by professional standards. It has to exist.

Where to apply when you have nothing

Small and mid sized organisations, not large ones. Large companies have structured programmes with filters that screen out empty CVs automatically. Small firms hire when they need hands, judge applications individually, and often never advertise at all.

• Your own college’s placement cell, which usually has local employers who specifically take beginners.
• Internshala, which carries a large volume of entry level roles across fields, including many that state no experience is required.
• LinkedIn, both for listings and for contacting people directly.
• The AICTE National Internship Portal at internship.aicte-india.org, which is free for students and lists opportunities across sectors. It is oriented mainly towards students at AICTE approved institutions.
• Direct approaches to small firms in your city, which is the single most effective route and the one students avoid.

The cold email

Most cold emails fail because they are about the sender’s feelings rather than the recipient’s problem. Keep it to five sentences.

1. Who you are, in one line: course, year, college.
2. What you are asking for, specifically: a six week internship starting in May, in person or remote.
3. Why them, in one line, showing you know something about what they do.
4. What you can offer, with the piece of work attached.
5. A closing line that makes replying easy.

Send it to a named person. Follow up once, after a week, in two lines. Then stop and move on to the next one. Expect most to go unanswered, which is normal and not a verdict on you. Thirty well targeted emails will usually produce several conversations.

Volume, tracked

Keep a simple sheet: organisation, person, date sent, date followed up, outcome. Students who do this apply far more consistently than students who rely on memory, and consistency is most of what decides this.

Before you accept anything

No legitimate internship requires you to pay a fee. Any request for a registration charge, a training fee, a security deposit or a refundable deposit is a scam, without exception. The same is true of an offer made without any interview. If you are unsure about a listing, check whether the organisation has a working website, an email address on its own domain, and employees visible on LinkedIn.

A note for law students

If you are a law student rather than a general applicant, Lexfolio runs its own virtual internship, where interns research and write legal content that is published under their own name. It is free, applications are open on a rolling basis, and it is one way to get published writing onto a CV that does not have much on it yet.

The order to do this in

1. Rewrite your CV using what you already have, with outcomes and numbers.
2. Pick a field and make one piece of real work in three weeks.
3. List thirty organisations, mostly small ones, in that field.
4. Find a named person at each.
5. Send five emails a day until the list is finished, tracking each one.

Marketing internships in India are mostly digital marketing internships, whatever they are called. If you are expecting brand strategy, you will probably get search engine optimisation, social media content and analytics reporting. That is not a bad thing, because those are measurable skills you can prove later, but it is worth knowing before you accept.

What the work actually is

Current digital marketing intern descriptions from Indian employers list tasks along these lines:

• SEO analysis and recommendations on website and page structure
• Keyword research, meta tag optimisation and internal linking
• Writing original content for blogs and website pages
• Creating social media content, including case studies, blog posts and video briefs
• Monitoring search performance across channels
• Managing web analytics dashboards and reports, and flagging what matters against client goals
• Supporting both paid and unpaid search traffic
• Keeping content aligned with paid campaigns

Three months is a common duration. Many of these roles are advertised as full time and in office, with a requirement to be in or near the employer’s city, so check that before applying.

The main kinds of marketing internship

Agency

You work across several clients at once. The pace is fast, the variety is high, and you will produce a lot of output. You will learn execution quickly and strategy slowly, because the strategy decisions are made above you. Good for a first internship.

In house at a company

You work on one brand. Slower, deeper, and you see how marketing connects to the rest of the business, including sales and product. Whether this is useful depends entirely on whether the marketing team is any good.

Startup

Often you are the marketing team, or half of it. Enormous scope, almost no supervision, and a real chance to own something end to end. Also a real chance to spend three months doing things nobody ever measures. Ask who will review your work.

Content only roles

Some listings described as marketing internships are content writing positions. Writing is a genuine skill and worth developing, but understand that you are being hired as a writer, not being trained in marketing.

What to learn before you apply

Three things will put you ahead of most applicants.

1. Analytics. Being able to read a web analytics dashboard and say what changed and why. Most interns cannot, and it is learnable in a week.
2. Spreadsheets. Marketing runs on them more than students expect: campaign tracking, keyword lists, performance reporting.
3. Writing clearly. Most marketing output is words. Short sentences, specific claims, no filler. This is rarer than it should be.

A small portfolio helps more than a certificate. Run a blog, a page or an account for something real, even something small, and be able to say what you did and what happened as a result. Anyone can list a course. Few applicants can show a result.

How to find them

Internshala and LinkedIn carry the bulk of marketing internships. Agency websites list roles that never reach aggregators, and agencies hire more or less continuously, so a direct email with a portfolio link is reasonable. Startups often post on LinkedIn only, or not at all, and respond well to a direct message to the founder if you can point to something you have made.

The red flag to watch for

A number of marketing internships, particularly unpaid remote ones, are structured around getting free content produced. The signs are a high volume target stated up front, no named supervisor, no review process, and work that is published without any feedback to you.

Ask one question before accepting: who reviews my work, and how often? If there is no answer, you are labour rather than an intern, and you will finish with a word count rather than a skill.

Questions worth asking

1. Which channels will I work on, and will I touch analytics or only content?
2. Who reviews my output, and how often?
3. Will I see campaign performance data, or only produce the inputs?
4. Is there a project with a deliverable at the end?
5. Is the stipend stated in writing, and is it conditional on anything?

Stipends

Marketing internship stipends vary widely, and unpaid marketing internships are common, particularly for remote content roles. Many listings state no figure at all. Ask directly before accepting, and treat a refusal to put the amount in writing as the answer.

What the first month usually looks like

Expect the first week to be reading and access: brand guidelines, previous campaigns, logins to the analytics and scheduling tools. Ask early for access to whatever measures performance, because interns who only ever see the publishing side never learn whether anything they made worked.

Weeks two and three are usually production: posts, blog drafts, keyword lists, reporting templates. By week four you should be able to say which of the things you made performed better than the others, and have a theory about why. If you cannot, you are not being shown the data, and that is worth raising.

A note on AI tools

Most marketing teams now use AI tools for drafting and ideation, and there is no reason not to. What separates a useful intern from a replaceable one is the judgment applied afterwards: whether the claim is accurate, whether it sounds like the brand, whether it says anything a reader did not already know. Output volume is no longer scarce. Editing, verification and taste are.

If you submit work that is visibly unedited, people notice quickly, and it is difficult to recover from that impression in a three month placement.

Finishing with something to show

Keep copies of everything you produce and the numbers attached to it. Traffic before and after, engagement on the posts you wrote, keywords that moved. Marketing is one of the few functions where you can leave with evidence rather than a description, and interns who collect it as they go write far better CVs than those who try to reconstruct it afterwards.

HR internships are among the easiest to get and among the most variable in quality. At one end you will work across recruitment, onboarding, compliance and employee engagement and finish with a genuine understanding of how a workforce is managed. At the other you will spend two months posting job ads and making cold calls to candidates. The listing usually tells you which, if you read it carefully.

What the work actually is

Drawing on current HR intern job descriptions from Indian employers, the work clusters into four areas.

Recruitment, which is most of it

• Screening resumes against a brief and shortlisting candidates
• Helping draft job descriptions
• Sourcing candidates through LinkedIn, job boards and recruitment tools
• Making initial screening calls
• Scheduling interviews and coordinating between candidates and interview panels
• Tracking candidates through the hiring pipeline and following up
• In some roles, reference and background checks

Expect recruitment to be the bulk of an HR internship almost everywhere. It is the part of HR with the most volume and the most work that can safely be handed to someone new.

Onboarding and records

• Supporting induction and orientation for new joiners
• Document verification
• Maintaining employee records and HR databases
• Coordinating exit formalities and offboarding paperwork

Operations and compliance

• Tracking daily attendance and leave
• Supporting monthly payroll inputs
• Supporting statutory areas such as provident fund, employees state insurance, gratuity and workplace harassment compliance
• Updating policies, handbooks and standard operating procedures

This is the part most interns undervalue and the part that is most worth learning, because it is where HR connects to law and to money. If a listing mentions compliance work, it is usually a better internship than one that does not.

Engagement and performance

• Planning engagement, team building and wellness activities
• Collecting employee feedback and supporting internal communication
• Supporting performance tracking, probation reviews and improvement plans

Who takes HR interns

Recruitment consultancies and staffing firms hire the largest numbers, and the work there is almost entirely sourcing and screening. Mid sized companies with a small HR team give the broadest exposure, because there is nobody else to hand the work to. Large companies run structured programmes with a defined project, which are harder to get into and narrower in scope. Startups vary enormously depending on whether anyone senior is actually doing HR.

How to apply

Internshala and LinkedIn carry most advertised HR internships. Your college placement cell will have local employers. For consultancies, a direct email works, because they are usually hiring continuously.

On the CV, lead with anything involving organising people: running a college event, coordinating a team, handling registrations for a fest. HR work is largely coordination under time pressure, and evidence that you can do that matters more than coursework in organisational behaviour.

If you can use a spreadsheet properly, say so. A great deal of HR work is tracking things in spreadsheets, and most applicants cannot do it well.

Questions to ask before accepting

1. What proportion of the role is recruitment, and what else will I touch?
2. Will I work on payroll inputs or compliance at all, or only on hiring?
3. Who will I report to, and how often will we speak?
4. Is there a project with a deliverable, or is it ongoing support work?
5. Is the stipend stated in writing, and when is it paid?

The second question is the most revealing. An employer who says the intern will never go near compliance or payroll is telling you the internship is a sourcing role with an HR label.

A warning about targets

Some recruitment consultancies set interns a closure target and tie the stipend to meeting it. That is a sales role in all but name. It is not dishonest if the listing says so, but it often does not, so ask whether your stipend depends on placements you make before you accept.

Stipends

HR internship stipends vary widely across employers and cities, and a meaningful number of these internships are unpaid or pay a token amount. Individual listings on job boards show a broad spread even within one city. Read what the specific listing says and get it in writing, rather than relying on any average figure.

What a good HR internship teaches you

The useful thing about HR is that it sits between people and rules. A recruitment task teaches you how candidates are assessed, which is directly useful when you are the candidate. A compliance task teaches you what an employer must do by law, which is useful for the rest of your working life regardless of what you end up doing.

Pay attention to the judgment calls you see rather than only the process. Why was one candidate progressed and another not, when both met the stated criteria? How does the team decide whether a complaint is a grievance or a performance issue? Those decisions are where the actual expertise lies, and interns who ask about them learn far more than interns who only complete tasks.

Common mistakes

1. Treating candidate handling as a clerical task. You are often the first human contact a candidate has with the organisation, and people remember being ignored. Reply to everyone, including rejections, if you are permitted to.
2. Being careless with personal data. Resumes, salary details and identity documents are sensitive. Do not forward them to personal accounts, and do not discuss specific candidates outside the team.
3. Staying silent when overloaded. Sourcing work expands to fill whatever time is available. Say when you are at capacity rather than quietly letting the quality drop.
4. Not asking what happened next. If you screened forty profiles, find out who was hired and why. That feedback loop is how screening becomes a skill rather than a chore.

Making it count

Keep a record of numbers as you go: how many profiles you screened, how many interviews you scheduled, how many joiners you onboarded. HR is one of the few functions where an intern can produce genuinely quantified achievements, and most interns fail to write any of it down until their last day, by which point they are guessing.

Before you leave, ask for a letter that names the areas you worked across. If you touched compliance or payroll, make sure it says so, because that distinguishes you from the large number of candidates whose HR internship was entirely sourcing.

Commerce students have more internship options than most realise, but they are spread across very different kinds of organisation: chartered accountancy firms, company finance teams, banks and non banking lenders, brokerages and research outfits, and finance roles inside startups. The work in each is not the same, and choosing badly wastes a summer.

The main routes

Chartered accountancy firms

Firms of all sizes, from the large networks to two partner local practices, take interns. The work is usually audit support, bookkeeping review, tax return preparation, GST filings and documentation. In a smaller firm you will see more of the whole process and be given real files earlier. In a larger firm you will work on a narrower slice of a bigger engagement, with more structure around you.

This is the most useful route if you are heading towards CA, and it is also useful if you are not, because it teaches you how financial records are actually kept and checked rather than how they appear in a textbook.

Company finance teams

Internships inside a company’s own finance function involve accounts payable and receivable, reconciliations, monthly closing support, budget tracking and management information reports. It is less glamorous than it sounds in a job description and more useful than it sounds, because you see how a business actually measures itself.

Banks and lenders

Most internships here sit in operations, credit support, or sales and relationship functions rather than in anything resembling investment banking. Be clear about which you are applying to. A credit internship, where you help assemble and check the file behind a lending decision, teaches you a great deal. A sales internship largely teaches you sales.

Research and broking

Equity research and similar roles involve building and updating financial models, reading annual reports and filings, summarising earnings calls, and drafting sections of research notes. These are competitive and they expect you to arrive able to use a spreadsheet properly.

Startup finance

A small company’s finance function is often one or two people, so an intern does a bit of everything: invoicing, vendor payments, expense tracking, investor reporting support. Responsibility comes quickly, supervision does not. It suits students who learn by being thrown in.

What you need before you apply

One skill matters more than any other, and it is spreadsheets. Not basic familiarity, but genuine competence: lookups, pivot tables, conditional logic, cleaning a messy data extract, building something another person can follow. Most commerce graduates overstate this on a CV and are found out in the first week. Spend two weekends fixing it and you will be ahead of most applicants.

Beyond that, know how to read a balance sheet, a profit and loss statement and a cash flow statement, and be able to explain how a transaction moves through all three. If you are applying to a CA firm, know the basics of the filings they handle. If you are applying to research, be able to discuss one company properly: what it sells, how it makes money, what the risks are.

How to find them

• Your own college’s placement cell, which often has relationships with local firms that never advertise publicly.
• Internshala and LinkedIn, which carry the bulk of advertised finance internships.
• Local CA firms directly, which is the most underused route. Many take interns but never post a listing, and a walk in with a CV or a direct email to the partner is normal and not presumptuous.
• Company careers pages for larger employers, which run structured programmes with fixed application windows.
• The AICTE National Internship Portal at internship.aicte-india.org carries listings across sectors and is free to use, though it is oriented mainly towards students at AICTE approved institutions.

The application

Keep the CV to one page. Put your spreadsheet and accounting software skills where they can be seen rather than at the bottom under hobbies. If you have done anything with real numbers, a college fest budget, a family business’s books, a competition entry, put it in with the detail attached.

In the covering email, say which of the five routes above you are applying to and why. An email that says “I am interested in finance” reads as someone who has not thought about it. An email that says “I want to work on audit files because I am sitting CA Intermediate next year and want to see the process before I do” reads as someone worth a reply.

What to expect in the first week

You will probably be given something repetitive: vouching entries, matching invoices, filling a reconciliation template. This is not a judgment on you. It is how firms check whether you are careful, because carelessness in finance costs money. Do the dull work accurately, ask what it feeds into, and better work usually follows within a fortnight.

Ask for the context once, properly, rather than asking the same question repeatedly. Write down the process the first time you are shown it.

Stipends

Finance internship stipends vary widely and a significant number of internships, particularly at smaller CA firms, pay little or nothing. Articleship under the CA framework is a separate arrangement with its own rules and is not the same thing as an internship. Check what each individual listing states and ask directly if it is silent, before you accept.

Getting something out of it

Keep a short record of every type of work you touch: which filings, which software, which kind of file, which part of the close. At the end you will have something concrete for your CV instead of “worked at a CA firm for two months”, which tells a future employer nothing.

Ask for a certificate or letter at the end that names the work you did, not just the dates. Most firms will write one if you ask before your last day.

Most MBA internships in India are filled through the campus summer placement process in the first year, not by applying to companies yourself. If you are at a business school with a placement cell, your main job is to be ready when that process starts. If you are not, or if you do not get placed through it, you apply directly, and that takes a different kind of preparation.

When the cycle runs

At IIM Bangalore, summer placement recruitment takes place in October of the first year, and the internship itself runs from the first week of April to the end of May, for a minimum of eight weeks. Final placements for the second year are held in February. Other schools follow broadly the same shape, but the exact months differ, so check your own placement cell’s calendar rather than assuming.

The practical consequence is that the work starts much earlier than most first year students expect. Recruitment in October means your CV, your shortlisting profile and your interview preparation all have to be done within the first two months of the programme, while you are also adjusting to the course.

What the campus process looks like

The usual sequence is this. The placement committee invites companies and schedules them into slots. Companies release their role descriptions and shortlisting criteria. You submit a CV in the school’s standard format. Companies shortlist from those CVs, sometimes after a written test or a case submission. Shortlisted students go through group discussions, case interviews or personal interviews, often on a single long day.

Two things decide most shortlists: your prior work experience and your academic record, including your undergraduate marks and your performance in the first term. You cannot change either by October. What you can change is how clearly your CV describes what you actually did in your previous job, and how well you handle a case interview.

The CV

Business school CVs are usually a single page in a fixed institutional format, so the only variable is the content of each line. Write what you did, what changed because of it, and the number that shows it. “Handled vendor coordination” tells a recruiter nothing. “Managed 14 vendors for a 6 city rollout and cut delivery delays from 9 days to 4” tells them something they can ask about.

If you are a fresher with no work experience, use what you have: college societies, competitions, live projects, anything with a result attached. Do not pad it with coursework.

Case interviews

Consulting and many general management roles interview by case. You are given a business problem and asked to work through it aloud. What is being tested is whether you structure the problem before diving into detail, whether you ask for the data you need, and whether you reach a defensible answer. This is a learnable skill and it takes weeks of practice with a partner, not an evening of reading.

Start practising in your first month. Students who leave it until the week before shortlists are announced generally do not do well.

If you are applying outside the campus process

Many MBA students are not placed in the first round, and plenty of good internships are never offered to campuses at all. Applying directly works, but it is slower and needs more individual effort.

• LinkedIn is the most useful single channel, both for listings and for reaching people. Alumni from your own school will usually reply to a short, specific message.
• Internshala carries a large volume of internships across functions, including management and business roles.
• Company careers pages list internships that never reach aggregators. If there are ten companies you actually want, check their pages weekly rather than waiting for a listing to find you.
• Startups rarely run a formal summer process and often respond to a direct, well argued email, particularly if you can name the problem you would work on.

Writing a direct application

A cold email that works is short and specific. Name the role or the team. Say in one line what you have done that is relevant. Say what you want: an eight week internship starting in April, or whatever your dates actually are. Attach the CV. Do not write three paragraphs about your passion for the industry.

Send it to a person, not to an inbox named careers. A manager in the function you want to work in is more likely to reply than HR, because they are the one who feels the shortage of hands.

What the internship itself involves

A summer internship is usually built around one project with a deliverable at the end, presented to a panel. The project is often something the team genuinely wants done but has not had capacity for: a market sizing, a process review, a pricing analysis, a customer research exercise.

Two things matter more than the quality of your final slide deck. First, how early you clarify the question, because interns routinely spend four weeks answering a question nobody asked. Second, whether people in the team want to work with you, which is decided in the first fortnight.

On pre placement offers

Many companies use the summer internship as a hiring filter, and some interns receive a pre placement offer. Nobody can tell you the odds, because conversion varies enormously by company, by year and by business conditions. Treat the offer as possible, not probable, and keep preparing for final placements regardless.

Stipends

Stipends vary very widely by sector, company and city, and some internships are unpaid. Published figures from placement reports are averages that hide a wide spread, and a reported average at a top school tells you little about what a given role pays. Read what the individual listing or offer states, and ask directly if it does not say.

What to do this month

1. Find your placement cell’s summer recruitment calendar and put the dates in writing.
2. Rewrite every line of your CV so each one has an outcome and a number.
3. Find a case practice partner and book two fixed slots a week.
4. List ten companies you would actually want to spend two months at, and check their careers pages.
5. Message three alumni working in those companies, with one specific question each.