AI Upskilling for Interns: How to Maintain Authenticity in the Age of Automation

Spring is coming, winter is ending, and fast approaching is the season of internship applications.

This is one of my favourite things to talk about. Not because I’m a professional recruiter, but because starting in January each year, I receive dozens of internship applications weekly from fantastic candidates from around the world. It re-energises me to see AI-natives moving into the world of work with intention, curiosity, and open mindedness, with a clear passion to contribute to AI ethics and digital wellbeing for future generations.

Hearing from a bunch of young people “I didn’t know this kind of organisation existed…this truly represents me and what I want for the world” is potentially the most motivating thing a start up founder can hear, and it generally reaches a peak during internship application season.

On the flip side, of course, is the challenge of reading through all of these applications.

Yes, there are AI tools that can (technically) help me with this. Do I use them? No: for privacy, safety and quality control reasons. As a start up founder, time is precious, but I personally still prefer to read through the resumes that stand out, because people matter (particularly in an AI-age).

Here are some tips that over the years I’ve come to realise will help a candidate stand out (to me). They’re also some of the same tips I share with our interns when they move on from us to continue improving their visibility as they build their careers:

Tip #1: Don’t just apply on the recruitment portal like everyone else.

Also write a personal email to the recruiter, department head, or person in charge (if you can find their contact).

If you leave it (only) up to recruitment platforms like Handshake you will become a number. Apply on Handshake, but use that as the bare minimum. Like I said, even our humble start up receives dozens of internship applications per week, and I expect this to continue well into the summer. That means almost a thousand applications that I have to filter through. The ones that stand out the most are the ones where some enterprising candidate has actually gone an extra step to find my email address from our website (or somewhere else) and written me a short email introducing themselves and explaining in one paragraph why they’d love to contribute to our work because of their [blank] experience or aspirations. 

Tip #2: Don’t overuse AI in application materials.

I don’t want you to write me an intro email that AI generated based on keywords from our job listing. I want to hear who you are.

I get a significant number of emails where candidates simply reverse engineer our job description using AI, or write generic intro emails that hit all the keywords that got scraped from our website or socials. This approach might be good to “beat” the AI recruitment algorithms. But it’s the opposite of what I personally want to see. I prefer to read a slightly awkward but authentic email where you tell me how - for example - you want to use AI to improve the regeneration of coral reefs using your leadership skills developed in tennis club, etc. I don’t want to read one where you list all your programming languages and add nothing else that’s memorable. If you do the first, you humanise yourself to the reader; if you do the second, you look like every other computer science double major at fill-in-the-blank-Ivy-League.

Tip #3: Don’t just list the courses you’ve taken.

List the projects and initiatives that represent your diverse body of interests, skills or aspirations.

Anyone can take Intro to Data Science 101. Bullet point for me the projects you’ve worked on in school, outside of school, for credit or just for fun. I don’t need to see that you single handedly programmed an app that received a Nobel Prize when you were in primary school. I want to see that you have the initiative, creativity and work ethic to apply yourself to something that represents you. You don’t have to be an Olympic athlete. Maybe you just Vibe-coded an app that translates colors into fart noises, just for fun. If you can show me that you derived personal and professional growth from analysing farts (i.e. “practiced UX/UI design”, “learnt basics of data analysis,” “leveraged open source datasets”), I guarantee you will get an interview - fast.

Tip #4: Interview the employer. 

If you do get an interview or email exchange going with the recruiter or person you want to work for, make sure you ask a few high-quality questions that show you are an active thinker. The interview is a two-way street: you want to work for a manager or company that gives you mentorship opportunities, room to grow or practice a new skill set, or take ownership of a project / portion of a project. Ask about these opportunities in the interview.

Tip #5: Do a quick digital footprint check

Take 20 mins to check that there’s nothing compromising out there.

Potential employers and recruiters will Google you. I have definitely Googled candidates and found things that inform my perception of them beyond their resume materials. Your digital footprint doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be professional (or discrete). Take down or make private any photos or footage that may be misinterpreted or not represent a professional side of you. Replace profile photos on socials, LinkedIn, or WhatsApp that show you in a state of undress (or scantily clad), engaged in activities that involve alcohol, or simply present you in a light that an employer might not see as professional. If you’re not sure, check with a friend or mentor.

Tip #6: Find a company that thinks you’re amazing - even without AI

I want to be clear that these tips aren’t going to help you beat screening algorithms or AI filters that many large companies use. Many companies, including small start ups, already leverage AI tools (responsibly or otherwise) to screen candidates. While that might seem discouraging, it’s also an opportunity to reflect on what kind of company you want to work for. Would you rather work (long-term) for a company that hires you, first and foremost, for your human intelligence, creativity and soft skills, and second for your ability to leverage AI tools to enhance those core human skills? Or a company that hides behind AI filters and incentivises candidates to present diluted, watered-down versions of themselves in order to fit into a box defined by algorithms?

Happy hunting.