How to: Internship

It is internship season: How I found my internship spot

This is not the case for all Master’s programmes, but for mine (Ecology and Sustainable Development), a six-week internship is mandatory and part of the programme. On the one hand, this is very exciting because you get an insight into the possible everyday working life, but on the other hand it is also a bit nerve-wracking when you have to find your own workplace that will take you in. And of course you can always do an internship in summer, if you want to broaden your work experience and explore what work you would enjoy. So, in this blog I will talk a little bit about how my experience was looking for my internship spot, and what I ended up with!

For my program, you could do your internship anywhere as long as it had something to do with your studies and was approved by your professor. However, when I applied for internships abroad, I was unfortunately often rejected because at that time companies often couldn’t take interns due to Covid.

I know everyone says this, but I would really advice you to start looking for places early enough. This does not always mean that you will get a speedy reply, but it will at least allow you to contact many different places or receive further instructions from companies that either want to know more about you or redirect you to another contact.

When it comes to finding places to apply to, I basically googled a lot. I would start with NGOS and companies I knew of and was interested in and would look into their partner organisations and associations and work my way through all of their websites to find out what kind of work they did, if I was interested in their projects and if they perhaps were even offering applications for volunteer work or internship places on their websites.

I prepared a CV and motivation letter template and whenever I contacted a workplace I would adapt and customise the CV and motivation letter to the place of interest. I found that oftentimes it takes quite long to hear back from companies, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t hear anything back for a while and keep looking! Some places I have applied to have not even replied to my emails, and it is quite possible that I have not contacted them via an email address they use to handle such enquiries. So try to find an email address that is responsible for processing applications or call the company if you are in doubt.

If you study Ecology, Biology or a similar subject here is a potential list of interesting places you could look into to contact for an internship here in Sweden:

Amazon Watch Sweden, County Administration Board (Länsstyrelsen), Uppsalastiftelsen, municipalities (Motala, Linköping, Norrköping and others), The Swedish Museum of Natural History, Swedish Hunters’ Association (Jägarförbundet), Swedish Anglers Association (Sveriges Sportfiske- och Fiskevårdsförbund), The Swedish Carnivore Association (Rovdjursföreningen), The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (Naturskyddsföreningen), The Swedish Forest Agency (Skogsstyrelsen), NIRAS, Pratensis AB, Naturum Tåkern, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute

Finally I decided to do my own internship at Station Linné on Öland. Station Linné is a research station that is mostly focused on insects but also thematises plants and other projects. As of now, I have spent one full week at my new internship and it has been incredibly fun… but I think I will talk a bit more about my time here in my next blog, when I can give you a better overview of the things you can do here after working for a longer period of time.