HawkShadow
The Hawk Shadow program offers one-day job shadows, allowing students to gain insight into an organization and career while growing their network.
Career Treks
The Career Trek program offers field trips to visit multiple employers in an industry, allowing students to explore multiple career paths, understand organization overviews, and network while hearing about internship and job opportunities.
Forage
Forage offers simulations, allowing students to explore the types of problems or projects that organizations address. It is great for gaining career readiness skills and trying out a company before applying for an internship or full-time job. Participants may reference it on resumes as an extra-curricular activity or in a certificate or achievements section.
Parker Dewey
Parker Dewey offers micro-internships, which are short-term, paid professional projects requiring 5–40 hours of work over 1–4 weeks. This platform is ideal for students who can’t commit to a full internship, though opportunities can be competitive.
Embedded Course Work
Often students gain relevant experience as part of their course work and sometimes do not even need to leave campus. To search for courses that include experiences, use the Course Categories function in MyUI to filter for Community Engaged Courses, Capstones, Projects, Practicums, Internships, Research, Study Abroad, or Clinical Experience.
Competitions
In some fields, employers will sponsor competitions like hackathons, datathons, case competitions, art awards, or business pitches to not just foster the next generation of talent but to also recruit.
Volunteering, Service Learning, and Community Engaged Courses
Service-related activities are especially valuable for students pursuing fields that support the public good, such as social work, public health, and education. Explore service and public-good opportunities here, as well as through resources offered by the Office of Leadership & Engagement. They can also engage in community-focused work through academic courses—for example, Hawkeye Service Breaks or the Undergraduate Engagement Corps.
Freelancing
Freelancing is when you offer services to clients on a contract or project basis, as opposed to committing to a regularly scheduled internship or job. Freelancing is a great fit for those who have a skill to offer, such as coding, web design, copy editing, graphic design, assessment, translation, content creation, etc. There are many freelancing platforms, some that are general and some that are field-specific.
Interested? Completed some?
Connect with a career coach for guidance or to learn how to reference these on your resume, social media, or in interviews.