Are you a student wondering, is it worth doing an internship? It depends on where. Practicing your skills and networking in one of the most influential tech companies would definitely make an outstanding line in your CV and become an excellent experience for your professional growth.

To find your ideal internship, it is highly recommended to start your search early, especially if your goal is one of the tech giants cited in this article. It is preferable to start your search at least three months before the start date of the internship in order to find a position that suits you and avoid accepting any offer for a lack of choice. For instance, the hiring process at Google takes 8 to 10 weeks. In general, there are more internship offers in the spring, as summer approaches, as well as in September. However, internships are offered all year round.

Before applying, we recommend working well on your CV and overall application, which often includes a motivation letter.

Finally, do not forget to keep a spreadsheet with the names of the companies you have or have not contacted, the job title, and the dates of sending the applications to follow up on your search at the right time.

Prestigious companies looking for interns

To find the best of the best internship opportunities, we studied the website Vault that collects thousands of reviews by current and past interns. This is the ranking of top-5 companies that are looking for interns in 2020.

5 – Amazon

If you think that powerful companies hire only pure geniuses, you might reconsider your opinion after learning that Amazon has 840000 employees. It’s just impossible that they found so many people with extraordinary IQs! What values the most for the big tech companies, is the desire and motivation to learn. Through various technical and non-engineering internship programs, the company supports and nurtures hundreds of entering specialists every year.

There are four types of programs, including MBA Internships, PhD, University Technical, and University Non-Tech Internships. For all of the options, an intern may be offered a full-time position by the end of the training period. Another crucial for many students aspect is that all of the programs are paid. The requirements differ depending on the study level and location. It is possible to apply for an internship at Amazon online or at your university campus.

4 – Microsoft

Microsoft offers dozens of opportunities in different parts of the US, as well as internationally. One can become an intern in Mexico, Canada, India, Israel, many countries of Central and Western Europe are also looking for interns. The list of areas is broad too. Internships for students cover all sectors from Engineering and UX Design to Finance and Sales. To apply for a university program, a candidate should be a full-time student with a major in an applicable discipline. Another requirement is that there should be at least one term to finish upon the end of the internship period.

Some of the most prestigious programs offered by the company are those for Program Managers and Software Engineers. Program Managers elaborate on the connection between a consumer and software providers researching how people are using operating systems and such programs like Outlook, Word, Excel, and others. They work together with engineers and make a considerable impact on the future of technology. Software Engineers solve problems that users might have with the products offered by the company. As software stays the most profitable among the Microsoft products, these two internship programs are highly competitive and can become a crucial point of one’s CV.

3 – NASA

NASA may not be the first company to come in mind when we think about tech giants, but its elaborations are undoubtedly no less intricate than those of Microsoft or Google. The agency accepts interns for three sessions every year: Fall, Spring, and Summer lasting from 10 to 16 weeks. Most of the internships or fellowships are paid with a stipend, but there are a few volunteering opportunities as well.

Wolf Cukier, a 17-year-old American high school student, will long remember his time of the internship at NASA. As an intern at the prestigious space company in summer 2019, this young student of 17 years old discovered an exoplanet, a planet located beyond our solar system, after three short days of his internship. If this doesn’t motivate you to apply now, what does?

2 – Apple

The second place is held by the Apple company. Apple Inc. is one of the most highly-rated technology companies in the world. Since its creation, the Apple brand focused on hardware products such as devices like iMacs and MacBooks, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Since then, Apple has also turned to services for several years, mainly represented by its music streaming service Apple Music. They are looking for fresh talents to apply for both full and part-time internships in hardware and software engineering, applications, advertising, and finance. Apple is offering events for its interns and sponsoring contests where the winners are awarded Apple valuable products.

1 – Google

Expectedly, the most prestigious internships, according to the Vault 2020 ranking, are those offered by Google Inc. Google’s strategy is to provide various free online services such as Gmail mailing, assisted browsing Maps, office suite Google Docs, web browser Chrome, file storage service Drive, and the YouTube video service paying off with the advertising traffic they generate. With that being said, no wonder Google offers dozens of internship opportunities in different branches of the company. Google usually provides internships of 12-14 weeks. There are programs for people talented in problem-solving, coding, and for those who are future design professionals. There are also non-engineering internships for business, marketing, finance, law, and management students. The program that is called BOLD Internship encourages historically underrepresented groups of people to join Sales, Marketing, and People Operations teams.