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Heyas fellow TLers,
As a Computer Science student I'm close to wrapping up the last few courses in my studies, which leaves me with a final 5-month internship to do before getting my degree. I'm mostly specialized in developing web applications, I've done most of my coding in Java(J2EE) and PHP.
In an effort to see more of the world and meet new people, I've been looking to do this abroad.
Now the hard part begins, finding a place! I'd love to go to an English speaking country outside of Europe. Countries like Australia, United States or Canada all sound awesome to me. I'm mostly just going for the experience, so I'm not too picky on an exact destination.
I'm not sure what the best approach is to finding an internship. So far I've thought about some options:
- Job listing websites (do they often offer internships?)
- Sending out resumes randomly to webdevelopment companies
- Asking for help to Universities abroad, maybe they have connections to companies
Any suggestions/experiences/offers would be greatly appreciated, if I can get this to happen I'll be one heck of a happy guy. 
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Pretty awesome to hear that you want to get experience outside your home country. The company that I work in does a lot of work with Brazil and Germany, so I can see that getting international experience would be a very good thing (granted, I'm working on the hardware side of things).
As for finding opportunities abroad, most job board sites will have internships listed. I can only speak for the US in this matter, though. Like you mentioned, sending out your resume to random webdev companies won't hurt. I would think that finding an internship abroad would be harder than finding one in your country, so utilize your university as much as possible. Ask advisers/career councilors/professors if they know of any opportunities or if they have worked with any universities abroad and see if they can set you up with any contacts that they have there.
One more thing that I thought of but didn't see you address was getting a work visa. As far as the US goes, you will need a work visa to take a job if you are not a citizen, but I am not sure how it applies to internships. I also do not know how long the process takes. So, I would again say to ask people at your university for more information about this as soon as possible.
Good luck with your search.
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Does your university have some sort of career center or advising? They can probably help you out. And yeah, there are job listing websites that also list internship positions.
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Most better universities over here in germany provide mailing lists where trainee stuff and internships are just thrown about.
general uni tip: ask at the secretary's office of your faculty, the least they usually know is whom to ask about any matter. most of the time, they already have solutions in their desk drawers. secretaries at universities tend to be more awesome than you'd think. 
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Hey guys, thanks for the tips! I forgot to mention this, but I have indeed been to the "International Office" in my faculty. It was a bit of a disappointment, they only assist students looking to do a part of their studies abroad, for example 6 months of following courses at a university.
Since an internship is more of a work-thing, they didn't have anything to help with that, they didn't have connections to businesses abroad. I basically got told that finding a place is completely up to me. The only help they offered is that once I have found a potential internship, someone from the faculty would be willing to establish initial contact to make an official impression.
On May 26 2011 05:35 WooChop wrote:
One more thing that I thought of but didn't see you address was getting a work visa. As far as the US goes, you will need a work visa to take a job if you are not a citizen, but I am not sure how it applies to internships. I also do not know how long the process takes.
From what I've gathered online, there is a trainee-visa for interns. They only require you to be enrolled in a university and get confirmed as an intern by the company you'll be working at. I'm not sure about the length of the process though. I'm looking to start my internship this September.
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I wouldn't expect universities to have connections to foreign companies. But they should have connections to foreign universities. Find out what universities they cooperate with for their study abroad program and see if you can get the name/contact information of an advisor at that university. If they can't get you that, you could probably find it on the university's website. From there, just ask and see if they can help you at all. The worst that could happen is that they say no.
But again, internet job boards are a good utility. If you know of any companies you would have interest in, contact their HR department (or whoever you can find). You could also just Google "international internships" and see what comes up.
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I think you've set a very difficult goal for yourself. A company will take in people on internships to get permanent workers. So you have to convince the company that there is a prospect that you will stay permanently or at the very least be able to work for them from where you live now. If they are just training you for 5 months to have you leave afterwards, they won't want you. On top of that they will probably need to help you with paperwork for a VISA. It also doesn't help that the interview will happen by phone instead of in person.
Your best bet is probably to ask for help from councilors at the university you are studying at. Have people in your field there had their internships abroad before? What did they do to get them? Also I'm thinking that in order to get help from other universities, it has to happen through your own university. Besides exchange programs and specific agreements between universities, there is very little reason for a university to help a person who is not a student there.
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Probably it is easiest to find a company near home that has international offices you can travel to work in. The closer the company is to you, the easier to find contacts, to interview (in person haha), and the more likely the are to be familiar with your university's program (which is usually a good thing unless you honestly attended a crappy university, and then I guess not so much).
Does your university not have an employment office to help students who are searching for work?
Also, definitely start working on your visa now. It can take months just to get a passport if you hit at an inopportune time. It is the summer so more people will be traveling. You want to be sure to have plenty of wiggle room in case things get slowed down.
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Asking for help to Universities abroad, maybe they have connections to companies
This is your best bet. Even now people are still hiring for web development internship positions. I just got mine in Canada from my University Career Website. If you go on the Uni Career site of a big school, then you'll get MORE job listings than craigslist and a whole lot less competition. I can't say anything about where you want to go other than that Australia is probably cheaper than Canada which is probably cheaper than the states in terms of education.
Australia is hot though. And there are lots of bugs. Lots of ice cream.
Despite what they say, the States (at least the most populated places) don't actually have more stupid people or meaner people than Canada's cities.
A lot of people like to visit California or British Columbia because of the weather, and I'm sure people there are really sociable. I also hear there are hotter girls in hotter places. I prefer the colder cities with stuff to do (Toronto, Boston).
Craigslist is a job listing site, and it does offer internships.
Good luck, you should try to find a shared University style Residence so you can meet people and practice your English on them. Don't worry about interviews, most companies can do either skype interviews or phone interviews. Do have a portfolio of previous work though.
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Thanks a lot for all the tips and links guys
I've started making a list of universities and their websites so I can start looking around if I can find any contacts with them. I'll also drop by my faculty again to see if they can put me in touch with any unis they might be in good standing with.
A company will take in people on internships to get permanent workers. So you have to convince the company that there is a prospect that you will stay permanently or at the very least be able to work for them from where you live now. If they are just training you for 5 months to have you leave afterwards, they won't want you.
If I love the place I get to go to, I actually wouldn't mind migrating there when the job is done and become a permanent employee. I suppose that'd be worth a mention when I'm informing about a position at a company.
Australia sounds nice, who doesn't like icecream and hot girls? Also I just thought of a big bonus: I'll be out there September through January, which is spring-summertime on the southern hemisphere. I'd leave this place when the weather is getting shittier, and arrive at a place where the weather is getting better. Win-win!
Keeping all options open though, time to do some digging around the web and hopefully find a nice place
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Hi switchdev!
The fact that you're looking to study abroad during the intership is fantastic! The experiences you'll get working abroad are amazing. I'd strongly encourage you to come to Canada to do an internship: there are great places to work all across the country. Based on experiences working in Canada, I can tell you that Montreal (huge game dev sector), Ottawa (telecom), and Waterloo (RIM, need I say more?) are all awesome places to work.
I recommend you go to the webpage of your ideal employers. Most have their job postings, both for internships/co-ops and full time, located on their site. You can apply to the jobs from there, as well as maybe emailing the HR head to let them know how excited you are to even be applying to the company!
If your university/college has some sort of internship program, you should definitely send them an email telling them your plans. Some employers tend to favor people who are backed up by their school.
Good luck with everything! And send me a PM if you come to the Ottawa area for co-op 
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I'd recommend looking for anything on silicon valley. No where else in the world you'll have a similar experience nor have the same opportunities for job career and meeting the most awesome people in the industry
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EPT
