A Guide to Proactively Seek Internships at Any Stage in Your Academic Career
In today’s world, the demand for spatial thinkers with an understanding of “where” is only continuing to rise. Both in the geospatial field and beyond, many people begin easing into the workforce through an internship.
An internship is typically an entry-level, temporary (specified start/end timeframe like a summer internship) position with an organization. In terms of hours worked, internships vary between part-time (usually less than 35 hours per week) and full-time (usually 35-40+ hours per week).
There are paid internships which may include an hourly wage or a stipend for the duration (but usually exclude benefits like paid time-off and health insurance) and unpaid internships. Sometimes unpaid internships may be completed for college credit through your university if you are a current student.
Regardless of where you are in your academic journey – an upper-level current traditional student, an older student returning to school, a recent graduate, or you graduated a few years ago and are still working on entering the geospatial field – getting an internship can be a valuable experience that opens doors to future career opportunities.
Internship Benefits
There are immense benefits in working as an intern, both in the geospatial field and beyond.
Get hands-on experience. The biggest buzzword today with job/internship searching seems to be “experience” – even entry-level jobs that say no experience is required lean more towards candidates with internship experience over candidates with only the educational background. Internships provide hands-on experience in the field. While you do get to practice what you learned/are learning in school, internships also provide the space to learn new skills/software or learn more about something briefly covered in class.
Gain soft skills. If you have the hands-on experience for the latest app or emerging technology from an internship while applying for future jobs and other candidates do not, this could give you a leg up in terms of getting an offer for a job and maybe even for getting a higher pay. Internships also provide day-to-day experience as well – you get to practice working on a team in an office environment, learning how to communicate professionally, and may get to shadow or learn from others on the team.
Networking opportunity. Maybe you are a GIS intern in a municipal planning/engineering department, but you get to shadow/work with junior engineers, building inspectors, public works, etc. and learn what their jobs entail. While this is a great experience to learn about other related departments and jobs, it also ties in as networking. Networking and making those professional connections as an intern can help you in the future. Those connections may end up serving as professional job references or hire you on to work as a permanent employee after your internship ends.
A few weeks ago, I went out to eat with my former internship supervisor – I was their intern a decade ago and still keep in touch today. Right out of grad school, I was in communication with another former internship supervisor about applying and interviewing for a job opening. Sometimes, it is all about who you know.
Testing the waters in a low-stakes environment. Another important benefit of an internship is that it provides a relatively low-stakes opportunity to figure out if this is really the field you want to work in as a permanent job/career. Maybe you loved GIS in school and on paper, but as an intern you realized this field is not for you. If that happens, great! You have a few months to finish out the internship, and then you can re-evaluate your career path. Or, maybe you loved GIS in school and working as an intern just solidifies that this is absolutely what you want to do as a career. That is great, too.
Tips and Tricks for Finding an Internship
While valuable in the end, beginning the search for an internship can be overwhelming and frustrating but it does not have to be that way! There are several different routes you can take in your geospatial internship search.
1. Search various job boards
There are tons of job boards out there that include postings for GIS/geospatial internships. Some of the more obvious ones to start with include LinkedIn, Indeed, and Handshake. Search terms like “geospatial”, “GIS”, “geographic”, and “mapping” coupled with “intern” or “internship” can start to yield the right results. If you are looking for a more focused internship, you can also include more specific terms based on your field such as “environmental”, “surveying”, “planning”, “drafting”, “business”, and so on.
There are also several GIS/geospatial-specific job boards out there. Some of those include:
Volunteer GIS Organizations
In the US, many states have a not-for-profit, professional statewide organization run by volunteers with a participating membership body. For example, I live in New York and am a member of the NYS GIS Association which has a GIS Jobs Posting website page.
Some other organizations that have regular GIS job postings include:
- Women in GIS career search
- URISA job search form
- Ethnically Diverse Geospatial Engagement (EDGE) job board
- American Association of Geographers (AAG) job listings
- At the time of writing this article, one of the five most recent postings on the homepage was for “Intern-GIS/Water Resources”
- This website has job/internship postings as well as a space to upload your resume for potential employers to review.
- This website allows for filtering GIS jobs by location and type of job such as GIS Analyst, GIS Coordinator, GIS Internship, GIS Technician, Remote Sensing, and so on.
Government Job Boards
In the US, www.USAjobs.gov is the job board to consult if you are interested in working for any aspect of the US federal government (including National Park Service, US Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, FEMA, FBI, US Census Bureau, CIA, US Forest Service, and more). You can toggle on/off filters for jobs open to the public and jobs for students/recent grads to make it a little easier.
If in the US, many states and counties also have their own jobs page and may hire GIS interns.
US National Park Service GIS Internship Program
- Separate from USAJobs.gov, this program is a partnership between NPS and Southern Utah University that offers GIS internships to current students and recent grads.
2. Search specific company/organization website career pages
Not every company will post to a job board or maybe you want to stay local to your area. If there is a company you know of and are interested in, you can just go to their company or organization career page online and see what they have listed. For your consideration, many municipalities (towns, villages, cities, etc.) and planning/consulting/engineering/land surveying firms look for summer interns with geospatial backgrounds so it may be helpful to start looking into those local company/organization pages.
Take Esri for example. Esri has their own careers page and hires on-site paid interns for 12 weeks during the summer each year. They also hire for student assistants at three of their major conferences: Esri User Conference, Esri Develop Summit, and Esri Federal GIS Conference. This blog post outlines those student programs. While they may not be posted to job boards, if you were interested in seeing what it was like to work for Esri and wanted to apply for an internship, you could search their careers page directly using search terms like “intern” or “assistantship”.
3. Leverage social media and networking
Online mapping portfolio. If you have an online mapping portfolio that showcases maps/projects you have worked on during your academic journey, you can share a link on social media with hashtags that may attract potential internship employers. If you do not have an online mapping portfolio, consider creating one as it is a massive asset to illustrate your quality of work. Here are examples of others using ArcGIS StoryMaps to create a portfolio.
Leverage various social platforms. LinkedIn is the main platform for professional networking where you can connect with geospatial professionals, search job postings, join online GIS groups, and let people (read: hiring managers) know you are open to work. X (formerly Twitter) is another platform that can aid in your internship search – you can share your mapping portfolio, connect with others, and use hashtags. Using hashtags like #gisjobs can start to filter results when searching for internships. Download this eBook on more ways you can leverage various social media platforms to enhance your geospatial career.
Find local GIS groups. Find out if your area has a local GIS user group or chapter of a state/provincial GIS organization/association. Those types of groups often host networking events and conferences where you can interact with GIS professionals. Many of those conferences will have tables or booths for local companies that may be hiring interns so it could be helpful to bring some printed copies of your resume to hand out. Esri YPN also has seven local chapters, each hosting two in-person meetups per year.
I have a friend that graduated a few years ago with a geography/GIS undergraduate degree and was working in the restaurant industry as a server while wanting to get into GIS field. We mostly use Facebook Messenger and Instagram to message back and forth and over the last couple of years, I have been sending GIS-related opportunities. I told them about a free online semester-long university GIS course that offered different learning tracks (software options) which they enrolled in this past January. Earlier this year, I also sent them a local summer GIS internship posting for a nearby town. The posting noted the town was seeking undergraduate/graduate students and my friend had graduated several years ago, but applied anyway and leveraged that free online course in which they were technically a student. My friend was invited to interview and ultimately received an offer which they accepted. After the interview but before the offer, our local GIS user group’s annual conference was happening, and I encouraged my friend to attend with copies of their resume in hand. I also knew one of the interviewers would be in attendance and told my friend it would show the potential employer they were very interested in the field if they attended. I was right. At the time of this writing, my friend is immersed in all things local government GIS-related as the town's summer intern and is loving every minute of it. I also recently sent them an entry-level job posting and they said they already feel more confident in applying for that since having that internship experience.
4. Join GIS listserv(s)
In the US, many states have a GIS department or a university that maintains a community listserv or email list. Usually anyone can join, and the point is information sharing among the GIS user community. Jobs/internships are frequently shared by hiring managers or you can send an email to the listserv to say you are looking for an internship and include some information about yourself. There are a couple steps to formally join the listserv with your email but once you are subscribed, you will receive emails periodically and can also post your own. Feel free to search online to see if a GIS listserv for your state or region exists, but some examples of these types of listservs include:
- GISNY-L (State of NY): https://gis.ny.gov/about-us#electronic-discussion-list
- NEARC (Northeast US): https://www.northeastarc.org/listserv.html
- NJGF (New Jersey Geospatial Forum): https://www.nj.gov/njgf/about/listserv/
- AGIC-L (Arizona Geographic Information Council): https://agic.az.gov/agic/participate
5. Take the initiative to create your own internship and reach out to a company/organization to ask if they are hiring interns
All three of my internships during my undergraduate years were a direct result of taking this route. My junior year of college was a pivotal time in my academic journey. In the fall semester, I was taking Introduction to Urban and Regional Planning – a class I had no clue about prior to enrolling but knew it met the requirement for my environmental studies minor.
Towards the end of the semester, I knew I had found my niche and declared Geography as my major before the semester was over. At the beginning of the following spring semester, I was searching for summer internships. I was interested in transportation planning at the time and started looking local – my local county planning department, local transit authority, and local metropolitan planning organization.
While I do not live in Boston, MA - I love the city dearly and thought it would be fun to live there for a summer as an intern, so I expanded my search. I was looking on the website for a Boston transportation planning organization, found the contact information for the highest ranked person (their executive director), and sent them an email.
In my email, I stated my name and background (student/year, university name, interest in organization), and asked if they were looking to hire any summer interns. I also attached my resume. To my surprise and delight, they responded.
We set up a phone interview, and ultimately, I received an offer letter for a full-time paid summer internship, all because of an email I sent expressing my interest. I was fortunate to be able to afford living there for the summer but this method worked locally as well.
During the last month of my summer internship in Boston, I implemented my tried-and-true method a second time. I searched online for the county planning office local to my university, found the highest-ranking employee (their planning director) and sent them a similar email explaining who I was, my interest in their organization, and that I was seeking an internship during the upcoming fall semester. Delighted again, I received a reply, a phone interview, and ultimately another internship offer. This internship was unpaid and part-time during the fall semester of my senior year, but I was able to leverage college credit from it. After working hard all fall, I was asked to stay on for an additional semester-long internship my final semester of college.
Final Thoughts
Internships are a great opportunity to get hands-on experience in the field, practice what you learned in school, and network with geospatial professionals.
Looking for an internship can be overwhelming but through consulting job boards and company websites, leveraging social media and networking opportunities, joining online GIS user communities, or by simply reaching out directly to an organization and asking if they are hiring, the internship search will hopefully become more manageable and you will land one in no time.