Doing industry internships during your PhD

Important note: This post is heavily skewed towards research internships. This is because this is what I have experience with and are the target for most students who reach out to me.

For the sake of actionable advice, this post also assumes that you’ve already deciding to transition to industry. I am also writing from the perspective that most research interns are assigned to a research mentor during the internship.

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Hot take: Unlike internships during college, industry internships during the PhD are not about learning. Instead,

PhD internships are about executing, i.e., showcasing your skillset and how it aligns with a potential full-time job.

How can you best showcase yourself during the internship?

Collaborate with your mentor to define “success”

First and fore mostly, work closely with your research mentor to concretely decide the “deliverable” of your completed project. This means figuring out what is most impactful for your team & research mentor, but more importantly, how you can best

Highlight what you want hiring teams to know what you are good at

Consider the following options:

• conference paper — you are highlighting your research expertise (and potentially a patented new method or tool) and writing skillset to a public venue
• internal team readout/presentation — you are highlighting your research expertise and communication skills and can showcase the business impact of your work to the team & company
• internal team writeup — you are highlighting your research expertise and writing skillset and again, cans showcase the business impact of your work to the team & company

These are not mutually exclusive. But note that some of these deliverables often have different timelines and may require continuing to work on your project across the official internship concludes.

Network during the internship

MBA interns shamelessly network during their summer internships. It’s the expectation and cultural standard for MBA interns “recruiting” at companies.

Do this too. You can ask your research mentor for help with introducing you to others! (Especially hiring managers)

You should be regularly networking with others so that you can establish meaningful and productive relationships during the internship, but also so that they are aware that you are on the job market

See section Tell people that you’re on the job market in It’s all about luck, but there are ways to make yourself luckier. But there are also 2 main timepoints to actively put yourself out there:

• At the beginning of the internship — Let others know that you are there! Otherwise, the reality is that no one will know that you exist.
• Towards the end of the internship — Let others know when your internship is ending and what your target timeline is for starting a full-time job. Again, remind people that you are on the job market.

Make yourself visible

In addition to networking, collaborate with your research mentor to ensure that your research project and its business impact is visible to others. This will help

Showcase your fit to relevant teams with available headcount

In addition to regular update meetings with your research mentor(s) or perhaps a conference submission, here are some options to consider:

• full team presentation
• cross-team/org presentation
• intern flash talks

Strategize early about full-time job offers

For all 3 summer internships that I completed with my current company, I was told on Day 1 that there was no full-time headcount for me. This was heartbreaking and frustrating. But it gave me time to

Collaborate with others on headcount fit & logistics

For 2 out of 3, it was about research fit. While I was an excellent intern that could conduct research related to developing & recommending model parameters, I did not have the skillset to train those models and convert them into products at scale that was needed to be a full-timer.

• The first time I heard this news, I pivoted immediately & strongly. Since there was no headcount in my current team and organization, I worked closely with my research mentor to strategically: (1) identify other teams who might have headcount that I collaborated with—in this case, they were user experience research (UXR) teams and my intern project became mixed-methods based on the qualitative skills that I learned and integrated; (2) introduce me to hiring managers for networking chats; and (3) planned presentations and invited those teams and hiring managers
  • Note: I still maintained my commitments to my original team and completed the project goal as originally planned, i.e., a conference publication. The only difference was that I made myself much more visible to other teams with potential headcount than I originally thought that I needed to do.
• The second time that I heard this, I already knew this but had accepted the internship offer anyways to buy myself more runway time for job-hunting. This internship also opened the door for my third internship, which is where I eventually got my full-time job offer.
  • Note: The key to success in this internship was being transparent with my research mentor that I would not be able to produce a publication from the internship because that would have required more time past my graduation date, and that my main goal was to get a full-time job offer from the third internship team.

The 3rd time was about lack of available headcount, but not lack of research fit. This was both good and sad news. It was good news because my research mentor and I had the time to strategize together about how to request that headcount. And we did eventually get headcount for me by the end of my internship and I became a full-time Applied Scientist with that team :)

Communicate after the internship

Internal company communication is the greatest asset that your internship opened for you and that you should try to maintain after the internship. Figure out the best ways to stay in contact with your research mentors and networking connections—ideally, by keeping access to the default company communication channel.

Make it easy for people to tell you about job opportunities

Here’s an excerpt from a previous post It’s all about luck, but there are ways to make yourself luckier:

Bad, realistic scenario for PhD students: Once you finish a summer internship, you stop working > you stop being paid > you stop having access to e.g., slack > you stop hearing about potential opportunities because you are now outside the system and the barrier for contacting you is much higher than before

Better, realistic alternative: Once you finish a summer internship, offer to continue collaborating (this usually means working for free, which is obviously not ideal) > you stop being paid, but you remain as a “guest” in the company’s communication system > you can continue asking people for networking chats, have access to guest resources, and hear about company updates (which gives you clues about fiscal cycles for headcount budgeting) > people can then ping you whenever they hear about relevant opportunities

Other communication channels can be email or LinkedIn.

Learn how headcount is allocated

Surprise, turns out that there are multiple ways to get headcount. This will very likely differ across companies but I can at least speak to what I’ve learned about so far at mine:

• External hire
  • This means that you are a candidate that is completely external to the company, with or without a referral. If you get a job offer, normally you will start as soon as possible based on your team’s needs.
  • This may mean that you were previously a contractor at the company, but still need to apply as an external hire.
• University/grad hire (aka intern-to-full-time conversion)
  • This means that you are a student that is currently completing an internship. The definition of “student” can be ambiguous. This may mean that you have not yet graduated from your program or have graduated but are still associated with an academic institution. This means that you can be an undergrad, grad student, graduated grad student, and even postdoc. If you get a job offer, you are often able to pick your own date based on your graduation.
    • This is how I was hired as a full-time Applied Scientist. I was able to select my own start date which was any time during the year of 2025.
  • This may mean that you are currently a contractor at the company but since you are still a student, you can apply as an university/grad hire.

These different headcount pools are allocated to different candidate types, different numbers (likely there is always more external headcount), and at different timelines (external is usually by fiscal quarters, whereas university/grad is usually a specific month once the annual budget is finalized). The start dates are also often different, because budgeting is allocated differently.

Understanding these differences can help you strategize about how to access multiple types of headcount depending on your situation.¹

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AI was not used to write, edit, or brainstorm this post. All mistakes and em dashes are my own.