Final year B.Tech AIDS student, struggling to find a real internship — could use some advice
Hey everyone,
As I am in my final year of B.Tech (AI & Data Science), I have been trying hard to get an internship but nothing seems to be working out for me lately. Every other damn internship I find out about is a paid course, disguised as an internship, for around ₹5k/month, which is frankly ridiculous. I don't mind doing unpaid internships, but I don't want to waste my time and money paying someone to train me, and then call it an internship.
The worst part is I don't have any seniors or family members who can help me land an internship. Just myself and Google, experimenting and learning along the way.
Don't get me wrong, I am not completely inexperienced, I have a few self made projects under my belt (some computer vision-based, an ML anomaly detection project, and some full-stack development projects). I just don't know how to leverage my skills to get an internship.
So if any of you have experience with the following, I would really appreciate any advice you could give me:
How did you get your first internship, without any connections?
Does cold emailing or messaging to companies/startups or professors work? How did you go about doing it?
How can I tell which internships are scams? Which ones should I avoid?
Are there any sites or communities that helped you land an internship?
I would be forever grateful for any help I can get. Thank you so much for reading this entire query.