5 Tips for UX-Internship Applicants

Summary: Your application should demonstrate your UX skills. Make sure it provides easy-to-access, scannable information and that it addresses your hiring–managers’ needs.

We recently finished our round of intern hiring. In this process we reviewed 875 applications. We were grateful for the attention that our job posting received, and, unfortunately, we were forced to reject many excellent candidates since we could only hire 0.4% of them. Many of those who were rejected asked us for tips for how to improve their application next time. While we don’t have the bandwidth to answer to every one of them individually, here we distill some tips for UX-internship candidates. Some of these are particular to our company and our internal hiring process, but many are applicable everywhere.

Tip 1: Apply Early

Applicants had one month from the time when we posted our internship announcement until the final deadline. Most people applied towards the end of this period. Unfortunately, we could not afford to wait for everybody to apply in order to start reviewing applications. So those people who promptly sent us their applications during the first two weeks after the announcement was posted inherently got a little bit more of our time and of our attention.

Tip 2: Read the Job Posting

Even though our internship announcement mentioned that we were open only to people with student status during the internship, many applicants who were no longer students still applied. Their applications were not considered. It would have been a better use of their time (and ours) to apply elsewhere.