Blogs are about sharing wisdom and opinions.  One thing I have collected a lot of wisdom about is interning in children’s television.  I began my career working in children’s television, before I transitioned into video games.  All of my experience with internships, both being an intern, and hiring and supervising interns, is in children’s television.  I believe much of the advice in this article would apply to finding an internship in the video game industry as well.

1) Many people browse online for advertisements of internship programs they can apply to.  This is fine, and some people do get hired this way.  You must realize that the employer will receive hundreds of resumes in response to an advertisement.  Many applicants will not be remotely qualified.  You might be surprised how many chemistry or forestry majors will send their resume in response to an entertainment industry internship ad. 
Keep in mind that whoever looks at your resume will only glance at it for a few seconds before moving on to the next one.  You have precious little time to show them that you are the intern they’re looking for.  Make sure your resume is only one page, and list your most relevant qualifications first, even if they are projects you completed for a class or school club.  Work experience is great too, but if thus far you’ve only worked at the Dairy Queen or a local grocery store, the employer may be more interested in videos or games you produced in class, especially if they won awards or special recognition.  Put those things up top.

2) Don’t just submit resumes to advertised internship programs.  Do whatever you can to pursue other avenues. 

• Ask your professors if they have colleagues in the industry they would be willing to introduce you to.  If those people are not personally hiring interns, interview them about their career anyway.  At the end of the interview, ask if they have a colleague who might be hiring interns.
• For the television industry, you can pick a show you’re interested in and watch that show’s credits.  Write directly to production coordinators and production assistants by name.  People in those positions are usually involved in hiring interns.  Once you have some names, you can either:
  • Contact them via LinkedIn or email.  See more on this below.
  • Search the internet for the production company's postal address.  People enjoy receiving mail, and chances are good they’ll open your envelope.  I’m a big fan of the old-fashioned paper resume.  In this email heavy culture, they help you stand apart.  You’ll be taking up physical space in the pile of paper on the recipient's desk.  Small, yes but this is more area than a one line entry in an email inbox.
  • Find the main phone number for the production company and ask the receptionist for one of those people by name.  If you get voice mail, don’t leave a message.  Try again later.  When you do get through, be very brief.  Introduce yourself by name as a student at X University and ask if this is a good time to talk for a moment.  If it is (or even if they say it isn’t) ask if they are hiring interns at the moment, and if so, may you send a resume direct to their attention?  At which address or fax number?  Now you can begin your cover letter by thanking them for the phone conversation, and they should remember your name, which should help raise you to the top of the pile.

3) Consider an internship in research.  Research departments are responsible for making sure the target audience will enjoy, understand and be able to use the media that is created for them.  Watching children interact with shows and games first hand is invaluable to developing your understanding and making you a better writer or producer.  And who knows, you may decide to pursue a career in research!  Even if you still have your heart set on production or writing, you can use your internship in research as an opportunity to meet people in those departments.
Some kids’ TV shows and video game licenses are researched on the academic level, to prove that media can truly benefit the children that use them.  Sometimes these studies are run by university professors, but often they are run by researchers who work for the production companies.  Search your college library for scholarly journal articles about current shows like Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues.  Read video game research put out by places like EDC, and the Institute of Play.  Contact authors you’d like to work with, talk about what you found interesting in their report, and ask if they’re hiring interns.

4) Pick a place one or two places you’re particularly passionate about working for, and focus your energies on getting an internship there.  If you don’t get hired this semester, just try again next semester and the next until you get through.  But remember that big name places like EA or Nickelodeon can afford to be choosy and often prefer candidates with an internship or two already under their belt.  Apply to your dream companies, but also apply at smaller companies to get your feet wet.

5) Apply early.  Companies don’t all hire interns the same way colleges admit new students.  The application deadline isn’t set in stone.  If a producer happens to meet a great intern in January or February who will be available in the summer, then in the producer’s mind, the summer internship is already full.  That said, many places will have rolling openings, or many availabilities, so submit your resume often.  Hiring an intern is something that often gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list over and over again until it becomes a last minute scramble.  Apply early, but be patient.

6) If at all possible, use an address that’s local (within commuting distance) to the place you are applying.  Many internships are unpaid.  A hiring supervisor in New York City may feel guilty about bringing someone all the way from the middle of the country to earn a $10 a day stipend, and their guilt might keep you from rising to the top of the pile.  This isn’t fair to you, but remember too that hiring managers are burdened with the responsibility of making sure someone good fills the position.  They may worry that if they hire you, you’ll bail out at the last minute once you face the realities of how expensive it is to live in the city.  That will leave them in the lurch.  If you are planning to live with your Aunt Tilly while you intern, use Aunt Tilly’s address on your resume.  You can explain in the job interview, if the topic comes up.

A note on contacting someone via email: 
First, try LinkedIn.  LinkedIn is an increasingly popular social networking site that is specifically focused on making career related connections.  Some LinkedIn users have their permissions set so anyone with an account may send them a message.  Use this to your advantage.  It’s what LinkedIn was created for.  Sending someone a message on LinkedIn should not be confused for trying to add a person to your network.  As LinkedIn states in many places, network connections are for people who already know one another.  Similarly, contacting someone on Facebook for the purposes of finding a job or internship might not be well received, because Facebook is an environment for people who already know one another.

If you’re unable to contact the person you’re trying to reach via LinkedIn, you may be able to figure out what their email address is.  Most large companies assign every employee’s email address according to the same schema, like firstinitiallastname@ourcompany.com.  So, if you have an email address for one employee, you’ll be able to make an educated guess at what another employee’s email address will be.
First, figure out the domain name the company uses for email.  This is often the same domain the company’s website appears under, but not always.  Once you know it, Google that domain name and the word ‘email’.  We’re looking for any employee who has published his work email address on the web, maybe in a conference proceeding or presentation slideshow.  So for example, if I was targeting Ubisoft, I’d search “email ubisoft.com” and browse results.  If you’re unsure of the email domain name, you can use the company name instead.
Once you have located one employee’s email address, copy that format with the name of the person you’re trying to reach.  For example, if I dug up Joe.Smith@ubisoft.com, and I’m trying to reach Sally Simpson, I would send an email to Sally.Simpson@ubisoft.com
Whether you're contacting someone on LinkedIn or via email, remember not to make a pest of yourself.  Be brief, and send one message.  If you don't hear a response, follow up in two or three weeks.  If you still don't hear anything back, let it go.

Once you've snagged that internship, check out my follow up article on how to succeed as an intern and make them want to hire you full time.

I’d like to diverge from the topic of children’s video games for a moment to talk about some Halloween costumes my friend and I made a few years ago.  It’s not completely off-topic, I suppose.  Halloween is a very kid-friendly, if not kid-centric holiday after all, and the costumes are of the classic Sesame Street characters, the Martians.  Some people call them the 'Yip Yips'.


Here are instructions on how to make them, in adult sizes.  You could easily scale it down for a child, but keep in mind that the martians haven’t been featured on the show regularly for some time now, so a child may not recognize the characters.

Materials for one costume:

• Approximately 4 yards of fabric of your choice, probably pink, blue or orange if you want to match the television characters.  Make sure to select fabric you can see through when you hold it up to your face.  4 yards is a good amount for someone 5’9 or 6 feet tall.  You can use a bit less if you are shorter, more if you are taller.  If in doubt, make it longer than you expect to need and you can simply trim excess later.
• About half a yard of black fabric
• Pink and blue thread
• Glue
• Two styrofoam balls, 4” diameter is a good size
• Two feet of craft wire
• One sheet of black construction paper, felt, or craft paper
• One baseball cap
• Pipe cleaners
• Straight pins
• Safety pins
• Access to a sewing machine or serge machine

1. Get someone to help you for the first step.  One of you needs to be ‘the model’.  Ideally, you should be working with the person who will be wearing the costume, or if it’s for you, you can be the model and they can put the fabric on you.  If the person who will wear the costume is unavailable, try to get someone their approximate size, or improvise somehow.  Stand or kneel on a chair, etc.
2. The model should stand and hold his or her arms out in front of their body.  Each arm is making a ‘v’.  Your palms should be facing you, and your elbows should be pointed to the ground.  Don’t hold the hands higher than shoulder height, and don’t hold your hands out wider than the width of your body.  Your elbows should not be far away from your body.  It should be comfortable to stand like this for 15 minutes or more.  If you are unsure about how to hold your arms, see the video at the bottom of this post.  That may help clarify how the costume will work when it’s finished.
3. The other person should drape the fabric over the model, inside out.  We are essentially making a bag of fabric to drape over the model’s body, with extra fabric in front of the body for the arms in their ‘v’ position.  Adjust the fabric so hem will hit the model’s body in about the same place in front and back.  If it’s not perfect, no worries.  You can always trim it later.
4. Pin the bag of fabric closed.  First pin the excess bit that’s over the models arms.  Then start up by the head and pin downward.  When finished, carefully remove the bag from the model without sticking him or her with a pin.  Thanks, model!  You can relax.  Your work here is done for awhile.
5. Sew the seams you have pinned on your sewing machine or serge machine, starting with the seams on either side of the arms.  Then sew each side of the body.
6. Turn it inside out so the costume is now right side out.  You’re almost done!
7. Get your model to come back.  Put the baseball cap on the model’s head, backward.  Then pull the costume bag you just made over his or her head.  Use some safety pins to attach the costume to this baseball cap.  Be sure not to stick your friend in the head if you ever want this person to help you with craft projects again in the future!
8. Ask model to hold arms out in the front arm area.  Cut the black fabric in a triangle that reaches from the model’s 2 hands to his or her nose.  So the 3 points of the triangle are right hand, left hand and nose.  It’s tricky to measure and cut this, but do your best approximation.  Once you’ve made your cut, put a thin amount of glue on one side of the triangle, and paste it onto the front of the costume.  Use just a small amount of glue right now, and use more later if it comes detached.  If you use too much glue right now, it will just press right through the fabric onto your friend and make a mess.
9. Thanks, model!  You can sit down now, but don’t remove the costume just yet.  Now you’ve reached the hardest part, attaching the eyeballs to the head.  There may be a better way to do this, but one way is to thread wire through the styrofoam balls, and then bend the wire back through the costume and the baseball cap.  They should attach high on the model’s forehead, but not the very top of his or her head.  When we made ours, we found styrofoam balls that were sold shrink wrapped in packs of two, so we didn’t have to struggle with keeping them together.
10. Once the styrofoam balls are attached, cut two eye pupils about the size of a silver dollar from your black paper or felt.  Glue these onto the styrofoam balls right where you think the eye focus would be.  Look at pictures of Muppets on the internet if you need a model.  If you don’t like where you place them, you can always peel them off and try again.
11. Fashion martian antennae out of your pipe cleaners.  You probably need to spiral them together at intervals to make them appear longer.  In other words, twist two together and when you're about halfway down, add a third.  Twist some more and then add a fourth, etc.  Once you have spiraled together one 2.5 or 3 foot long pipe cleaner, bend it in the middle to make a V.  Attach it to the top of your baseball cap (outside the costume, of course) at the point of the V.  You can sew it by hand, or you might be able to safety pin it.  Attaching it to the styrofoam balls with pins or thread will help them stand up straight.
12. You’re done!  If necessary, cut the hem with scissors so the wearer can walk comfortably, or if one of the sides is longer than the other.  It shouldn’t be necessary to hem it on a machine if you only plan to wear the costume once, but you may if you like.

Remember: Relax!  If it doesn’t look perfect, it doesn’t matter.  No one will notice anyway.  Everyone will be filled with instant excitement when they see you in costume.  No one will lean in close to inspect your seams and ask “Well, what happened here? Why is this bit crooked?”  If you're not clear on some part of the instructions, ask me a question in the comments section, or email me at the address on my "About Me" page.

Here’s a video of my friend and I wearing the costumes in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.  We made news coverage on NY1!  We wore the costumes all night long, and were quite comfortable in them.  One advantage to the costumes is that you can wear whatever's appropriate for the weather underneath them and be as warm or cool as you like!

Sesame Street and Martian characters are copyright Sesame Workshop.