Many of my friends ask me this on a daily basis and are curious to know why I spend so much time updating my Twitter account and tweeting with others. While many individuals think Twitter is ‘just another social networking site,’ which in a way it is, it is more than that. This website is awesome for many other things, and among these other things is finding internships. I feel like there are two major points to utilizing Twitter to search for internships and they are hashtags and networking.

Using hashtags is a great way to search for internships. By researching (yes, you can research on Twitter!) hashtags to use while tweeting, you can find internships. A hashtag, for those of you who may not know, is when you type a word or phrase and put a pound sign (#) in front of it. For example, #internship would be a great start when it comes to searching for an internship.

You can search this hashtag and employers may tag their update with this particular hashtag so people searching it will see the internship they are offering. There are hashtags for just about everything so you are more than likely going to find an internship through just about any hashtag you decide to use.

Another great aspect of Twitter is networking. Through networking on this social media website you meet people that can help you find internships. One very valuable website I discovered through someone I met on Twitter is http://internqueen.com/. This is a great website/community to discover internships for various industries. Plus, Lauren Berger is awesome because she completed 15 internships in just four years of college! (Tweet her on Twitter! @internqueen).

I know that I have personally made contacts with various PR firms that I would love to intern for next summer. If I had never reached out to the firms I would not think I had a chance to intern for them, but because I have networked with them I feel like they have an understanding of what they can expect from me as an intern through my tweets.

While I did not mention this as a key point, I did want to make it known that you should definitely use people you are already connected with to find internships. The people that you tweet with on a regular basis can be a very valuable source to helping you find and discover internship opportunities. When I have friends looking for an internship and they ask for my help I tweet about it, and I usually hear advice from my followers.

Twitter is a unique community of individuals in so many ways. You can use it for numerous things, and internships is a very valuable one. When I hear of internships I think my followers would be interested in I always retweet them. Never know who may be looking for that special internship you come across!

Ashley Funderburk is a student at Western Carolina University and is majoring in Public Relations and Journalism. She is currently the WCU PRSSA Vice President and Firm Director at Catamount Communications, the student-run firm at WCU. Check out Ashley’s blog here, or follow her on Twitter, @amfunderburk1.

Related articles by Zemanta

• How and Why to Use Twitter Hashtags (compukol.com)
• InternLife Communication: Smart Phones, Energy Drinks & Balancing Multiple Internships (theinternview.com)
• Virtual Intern Life: Achieving Internship Success While (sometimes) in Your Pajamas (theinternview.com)