How to Cold Email a Company for an Internship

Done properly, it's one of the few ways a student with no contacts can start a real conversation with an employer.

Before you write: pick companies you can explain

Make a short list of fifteen to thirty companies. For each one, you should be able to say in a sentence why you want to work there. That sentence ends up at the heart of your email, so if you can't write it, cross the company off.

Where to look:

• small CA firms, design studios, marketing agencies and software startups in your own city
• companies whose product you actually use
• firms your seniors or professors keep mentioning

A second-year BBA student in Indore, for example, might pick a regional snack brand she buys every week, two digital agencies near her college, and a logistics startup that a senior interned at last summer. Her list beats "top 50 companies in India" by a long way.

How to find the right person to email

You want someone who could say yes, or who sits next to the person who could. In a firm of ten people, that's usually the founder. In a company of two hundred, it's a team lead or manager in the department you want to join, such as marketing, finance or engineering.

Two places to find them:

The company website. Look at the About, Team or Contact page. Small firms tend to list their founders and partners by name.

LinkedIn. Search the company, open its People tab and look for titles like "Marketing Manager" or "Engineering Lead". You'll see names even when you can't see emails.

No named person anywhere? Fall back on a careers@ or hr@ address. Use info@ only when nothing else exists. And if a company on your list already has an opening in our Internships listings, apply there as well as writing.

Don't buy email lists or use tools that guess addresses in bulk. It's a bad idea: you'll land in spam folders and annoy people who might otherwise have helped.

A sample cold email for internship

Keep the body under 150 words. Whoever reads it has a full inbox and will decide within a few seconds whether to carry on.

Subject: Summer internship request: BCom student, Kochi (accounts and GST)

Dear Ms Menon,

I'm Anjali Thomas, a second-year BCom student at a college in Kochi. I've followed your firm's work with small exporters in Ernakulam, and I'd like to ask whether you take interns over the summer.

I'm comfortable with Tally and Excel, and last semester I helped my uncle's hardware shop file its GST returns for three months, including reconciling purchase invoices.

I'm free from April to June and can work full-time, on-site. I've attached my resume. If there's any chance of an internship, even unpaid for the first few weeks while you see if I'm useful, I'd be glad to talk.

Thank you for your time.

Anjali Thomas anjali.thomas@example.com | +91 98XXX XXXXX

Ms Menon knows what this is from the subject line alone. Anjali opens by showing she knows the firm, offers one piece of evidence in the middle and ends with her dates.

About the unpaid weeks: offer that only if you can afford it and you're comfortable with it. And never agree to pay a company for an internship.

How to ask for an internship by email without sounding generic

Most internship request emails fail the same way. They open with "I am writing to express my keen interest", list every skill the student has heard of, and could go to any company without a word changed.

Three habits fix that.

Write one specific line about them. Mention a product, a client type, a recent post or a project. "I liked your recent campaign for the Onam sale" is better than "your esteemed organisation".

Give one proof, not a list. A single project with a result reads stronger than ten skills. "I built a Python script that cleaned our college fest's registration sheet of 2,000 entries" tells them more than "Python, Excel, SQL, communication, teamwork".

Ask a small, clear question. "Do you take interns over the summer?" is easy to answer. "Please give me an opportunity" isn't a question at all.

Sending your resume straight to HR teams as well? The wording changes a little, and the post on how to email your resume to HR covers that case.

Attachments, timing and small details

Resume as one PDF. Name it Anjali_Thomas_Resume.pdf. Don't attach certificates or marksheets unless asked. If your resume needs work first, build one from our CV templates before you send anything.

Send from a proper address. Use your name, not a nickname.

Timing. Send on a weekday morning, so your email sits near the top of the inbox when people start work. Skip late nights and weekends.

One email per person. Don't CC five people at the same company. Write to one, and if it goes nowhere, try another a few weeks later.

Check names twice. Get the person's or the company's name wrong and you're out.

How to follow up once

Heard nothing after about a week? Reply in the same thread, so your first email shows underneath, and keep it to two or three lines:

Dear Ms Menon, I'm following up on my note below about a summer internship. I know this is a busy time of year, so if it's not possible this summer, I completely understand. Thank you.

One follow-up, and that's all. If there's still no reply, stop writing to that person. A third and fourth email reads as pressure and can get your address marked as spam.

If they do reply and you end up having a call or an interview, send a short thank-you afterwards. Our guide to the follow-up email after an interview has wording for that.

What reply rate should you expect?

Most cold emails get no reply. People are busy, plenty of small firms have no budget for interns, and some emails just get lost. Silence is normal. It isn't a verdict on you.

Replies come when the email is personal, goes to a named person and talks about something you can actually do for them. Mass emails to generic addresses get almost none.

So send a few carefully written emails each week rather than fifty in one night. Keep a simple sheet with the company, the person, the date you emailed, the date you followed up and any reply. After a month, look at which emails got answers and do more of what worked.

Treat a "no" kindly. "Not this year, but try us in December" leaves the door open. Thank them, note the month and write again then.

What not to do

Don't BCC the same email to hundreds of addresses. Don't follow up on WhatsApp or call a personal number they didn't give you. And don't exaggerate your skills, because an internship shows what you can actually do within a week.

This weekend, pick ten companies, find one named person at each and write two emails properly before you send any.

Some of the companies you'd write to may already be hiring through our Internships listings, so check those too.