Hello lovely person who wants to work for us! We are flattered! We love having interns here, as it allows us to meet new people. And out of the people who work here, Chris, Nichaela, JP, Kevin, Tamlyn and Aric all started as work experience or internship people. We like to “try before we buy”.

1. Don’t write “Dear Sirs”.

You wouldn’t believe how many times we get people emailing us and going “Dear Sirs” when if you just check out our team page you would see we are run by a woman and have a mixture of girls and guys working here. When we get a message like this, we write back a sharp kind of email explaining this.

2. Write a proper email to go with your CV.

We want to see your enthusiasm, your personality, why you want to work for us, and compliments about our work. There’s a big hint right there.

3. Don’t act like you know it all. No one does.

We hire humble people who know they have a lot to learn. We don’t mind if you are shy, or nervous in your interview. That’s normal. We look for hard-working people, with a great attitude and a willingness to learn.

4. Show your work online.

Don’t send attachments (except your CV maybe). Send us links to examples of your work. Make sure where you are showing your work, you have captioned and labelled things clearly. Accuracy and attention to detail are really important to us. And there are lots of places you can show your work online at – eg www.carbonmade.com and www.behance.net

5. Show you can use social media – properly.

While we don’t expect our clients to know all this, if you want to work for us, you kind of do. Update your LinkedIn profile with a picture and vanity URL. Read our blog posts about social media. Tweet us!

6. Be prepared to come for an interview and meet us face to face.

We always like to meet our potential interns. As we have limited spare desk space, we can’t take you all in, so we interview and choose who is best for the team. We look at attitude and friendliness and a willingness to work hard and learn – before anything else. Bring a printout of your CV, and questions for the team!

7. Check everything you have online.

Check your CV, Make sure the document is named properly – and a PDF is best. Make sure you don’t have any grammatical errors or, eek – random capitalisation!

8. Be honest with your level of capability.

It’s better to say “I am still learning this” than mislead us with that you know it already. This will help us think about what type of work we could get you doing initially, and what you need more help with.

9. It’s not all playing around with code and Photoshop –

If you get to work with us, it’s an amazing opportunity. Our interns get real-life experience on real projects. It may not lead to a full-time job with us, but it’s going to help you in your career. But realise also that you will be given work that might be considered boring or repetitive by some – like admin, making tea, welcoming our clients, and organising things. Remember, if you’re helpful and happy about all types of work, we will notice and appreciate it.
There you go – that’s the gist of it! No excuses now, we have spelled it out, so if you are reading this, and I mean REALLY reading this, we will probably be seeing you at some point, somehow – maybe at our next open day?