For Cal Parents

Finding Internships and Jobs

Gaining work experience – whether in the form of internships, volunteer work, or full-time, part-time or summer jobs – allows students to validate their career interests and to develop skills and contacts that will serve them well as they pursue post-graduate employment or education.

Common Questions

Career Center Resources

• CalJobs - online access to 1000s of full and part-time, on and off-campus jobs and internships from a broad array of career fields and 350+ employers, most from business and technology, who use On-Campus Recruiting (OCR) to recruit Cal students every year
• Job & Internship Guide with guidance for preparing for a job or internship search, finding opportunities, writing resumes and cover letters, interviewing, and negotiating and deciding among offers
• 10+ Career & Internship Fairs to recruit Cal students, attended by over 1000 employers each year, and hundreds of Employer Info Sessions where students can learn about an organization's career opportunities, culture, and products and services
• Internships.berkeley.edu, a section of our website that explains how internships work and provides resources for students to find or develop opportunities in specific fields
• Internship and Job Search Workshops & Speaker Panels
• @cal Career Network for networking with Cal alumni, an essential job search strategy
• One-on-one Career Counseling for help with developing resumes, cover letters, job and internship search strategies and interview skills
• Resources for Students with Disabilities - UC Berkeley's WorkAbility IV program provides counseling, programs and resources to a select, diverse group of Cal students and recent graduates with disabilities, and connects them with employers

How You Can Help

• Encourage your son or daughter to:
  • make academic success the top priority while at Cal, but also incorporate extracurricular activities into his or her schedule. Employers generally look for students who have been involved in a variety of arenas. At the same time, it’s a better idea to pursue fewer activities in depth than many different ones on a superficial level.
  • look for ways to gain formal work experience through internships, jobs or volunteer work
  • take advantage of all that the Career Center has to offer, ideally before feeling desperate to find an internship or job
  • start early in college to put together a resume and think about what kinds of experience and qualifications would be beneficial to add to it over time
  • give him or herself credit for skills and experiences already gained whether it be through paid or volunteer work. Students frequently discount unpaid work and jobs that aren’t particularly prestigious, but which can show that they know what it is like to work in a professional setting or as part of a team.
  • generate a list of people he or she knows - students, faculty, supervisors, etc. - who could become part of a professional network
• Keep a balance between offering to help your son or daughter and getting overly involved. You can offer names of people in your personal or professional network to contact for networking; on the other hand, don’t get in the way of his or her learning experience by trying to do the work yourself.

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