Fashion merchandising internships are an incredible way to get your foot in the door at a high end business. These internships are often offered during the summer but they can also can also be found in other times of the year as well. One advantage to participating in the internship during the summer is that you can focus solely on your internship instead of having to worry about classes going on at the same time. I have talked to several students who completed internships during their school year and usually either their internship or their school work suffered. Fashion merchandising internships should be treated like an actual job and because of this, I would strongly encourage all students looking at internships to look for them during the summer.  How does one go about obtaining a internship in the fashion merchandising field? Hard work and communication.

You are most likely not going to get the first internship that you applied for. You will likely have to go through an extensive process in order to obtain an internship and you should be applying for multiple internships. I encourage all of the students that I come into contact with to be applying for at least 10 fashion merchandising internships. It truly is a numbers game and the more internships that you apply for the better a chance you have at getting called in for an interview and getting your foot in the door at a high end company.  As stated earlier, many fashion merchandising companies use their internship program as a way to test out prospective employees. If you excel during your time as an intern, there is going to be a good chance that you are able to get a job at that company the next time they are hiring. Which leads me to my next point, do not apply for an internship if you do not have time for it.

If you know you are going to be busy with school or other things going on in life, the last thing you want to do is begin an internship that will take a larger toll on your time. If you accept an internship and you go about your work poorly you are going to hurt your “image” in the fashion merchandising world.  As with any work industry, the people in the industry talk. If you are a poor worker with Company A, when you apply for Company B, they are going to compare names and talk about how bad of a job you did. You are not going to get that job. Bottom line, make sure you have time do be working an internship before you accept it because decisions you make now could affect you later in life.  So now that you know about when you should be looking for internships and how to go about getting them, you might be wondering, where to I find these internships?

Fashion merchandising internships can be found on most businesses websites. If there is a company that you are wanting to work for in the future, go to their career page and look for possible internships that are coming up. By doing this, you can usually get a leg up on the competition because they tend to only be looking on job boards, which are a good place to look as well but the more leads you can find the better. Another great place to look is on social networking sites. Look around on Linked In for HR people at the company that you want to complete one of your fashion merchandising internships at and ask them if they have anything coming up. This is a very personalized approach and will make your resume stand out in a crowd.

Make sure that you complete an internship at sometime as it will greatly help your chances at landing a job and give you real life experience in the fashion merchandising industry.