How top students always catch openings first

Most students find internships the same way:
They refresh LinkedIn, scroll endlessly, and apply to jobs that are already flooded with applicants.

Top students? They don’t wait for jobs to come to them.
They build systems that catch openings the second they drop — sometimes before they’re even public.

Here’s exactly how they do it 👇

1️⃣ Understand the rhythm of recruiting

Every industry runs on its own calendar — and knowing it gives you a massive edge.

Tech, finance, and consulting kick off early and move fast.
Creative fields, non-profits, and startups? They usually start hiring months later.

When you understand the timing of each industry, you can prepare before the rush begins.

That means polishing your resume, updating your portfolio, and reaching out to contacts while everyone else is still waiting for postings to appear.

2️⃣ Set up smart job alerts on LinkedIn

You do not need to chase every job board on the internet.
Focus on the ones that actually matter and get the most traffic.

LinkedIn and Google handle the majority of internship searches, so start there.
Set alerts for your target roles and locations, and let the platforms do the heavy lifting.

The goal is not to be everywhere. It is to be early where it counts.

Step 1: Go to the LinkedIn Jobs tab and search for the role and location you are interested in.

Step two: Scroll down and turn on job notifications for that search.

That is it. LinkedIn will email you whenever a new role goes live that matches your criteria.

Set it up once and let the alerts come to you. It only takes a minute, but it can give you a few hours of lead time on every new posting.

That small window often decides who gets seen and who gets overlooked.

3️⃣ Subscribe to company career sites

If you already know where you want to work, stop relying on job boards to tell you when a position opens.

Go straight to the company.

Let’s say you are aiming for a software engineering internship and your top choices are Google, Amazon, and Meta.

Each of these companies has its own career portal where roles appear hours or even days before they hit LinkedIn.

Create an account on each site and turn on email updates for new internships.

These small systems compound over time.

What starts as a few extra hours of head start can turn into entire opportunities others never even see.

Talk soon,
Ethan