How can a student with zero experience get an internship in civil engineering? A seasoned civil engineer in the marine construction space shares her best tips and advice for breaking into the field!
🎓 Degree(s)
🏫 School
🅰️ Grades
🔨 Skills & qualities
🧠 Knowledge
📜 Certifications
2. Companies you can apply for
🌟 Career fairs
🔍 Resumes
📄 Cover letters
🕴️Interviews
4. How to secure a return offer
In engineering, job offers are contingent on you getting the degree, so you have to have an engineering degree. Get a degree in Civil Engineering or one of the subdisciplines.
I wouldn't advise getting a non-civil engineering degree. Not saying that you can't get into it with another degree.
- If you don't have the degree, have a story and network a lot. You could still get an internship just from knowing someone.
- Degrees matter a little less in construction. I know people with construction management degrees who're working in an engineering-type function but they can never be called a real engineer because they don't have the licensing.
If you're unsure, look into requirements for getting a Professional Engineer (PE) license from the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) and see what they say about whether you can get licensed without the degree.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
It's always impressive to see someone who went to a highly-rated program, but usually it's not an important factor in hiring unless you're going to top-tier firms (like prestigious design firms that can be a bit snobbier). Otherwise most companies just want you to have a degree from an accredited university.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
Grades matter more for internships, because they show how serious you are about getting out of school. If you're doing an internship pre-senior year and your GPA is in the 2's, I'd be a little worried as an employer. I'd wonder if you're going to repeat this year, which means we'll have to wait another year to hire you.
For full-time roles, as long as your grades aren't so low that it makes me wonder how you graduated, I don't think it's a big deal. If you have the degree, you have the degree.
Of course, Just being human, if you see a kid who's got a 4.0 or 3.9, that's impressive. It means you paid attention and it shows that you have a certain level of discipline!
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
I'd say the main things we look for are soft skills.
#1 Being able to speak publicly and have a professional conversation. You're going to need to talk to clients. And even within the company, engineers need to know how to talk to one another to smooth out any engineering processes.
For instance, the best student I've interviewed was:
- Able to talk without stuttering all over the place
- Able to answer questions (meaning that he didn't not have answers to questions)
- Able to be professional and personable on the phone
On the other end of things, I had a kid who made me wonder if they'd ever had an interview before. For example, he just didn't have answers to some of my questions. It was appalling.
If I hire you, you're going to represent my company in meetings at some point. So we're not always looking for whether you can do a CAD drawing perfectly. If you do know how to use a certain program that a lot of people don't, that's fantastic of course! But if we can't put you in front of clients, that's a problem.
#2 Being able to explain yourself well.
Our clients are going to ask every about every nut, bolt, screw, plank, beam, everything – even the dirt. If you can't explain everything you've done, that raises a red flag. Do you really understand what you've done? So producing a final product isn't enough. You have to be able to explain every nitty gritty detail!
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
When you start out, it's common to now know half of the terminology. Civil engineering is a broad field and each subdiscipline has different terms – the brands and equipment types are different too. We don't need you to be familiar with all of these technicalities as an intern. Just show us that you can pick it up quickly.
Of course, it is super impressive if a student does know some industry lingo or is somehow familiar with the field. For example, if you're applying for a construction management and you've been running excavators your whole life because your dad owns a construction company, that's super impressive.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
For interns, they're not looking for any real licenses or certifications. You're doing the internship to eventually get licensed and certified, after all.
If you do have relevant licenses though, do put those on your resume. For example:
- CPR certification: Most bigger companies have a company-wide requirement that employees be CPR-certified. This is so that if anything happens, they can say that everyone has been trained and can respond in emergencies. So if they see you're already CPR-certified, they know they don't have to train you.
- Any licenses that are relevant to your subfield. For example, if you're in marine construction, having a boating license or a diving license shows that you're interested in the field already.
If you're going for a full-time job though, I'd suggest taking the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam before you finish school when the material's fresh in your mind! I did mine spring semester of my senior year. You don't want to have to prepare for the test while you're focusing on a getting a real job.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
Make sure to try out different fields within civil engineering so you know which ones you're most interested in.
Civil engineering is an umbrella with lots of subdisciplines. You can use internships to try different ones out.
For example, I did internships in two different subdisciplines of engineering and these helped me figure out that I didn't want to specialize in either! Your employers won't be upset. Just focus on finding something you like to do.
Personally, I love surfing and being in the ocean, so I found my passion in coastal engineering. Wave math is insane – nobody still understands it fully, which is why we can't predict the waves. I get to do a mix of everything - geotechnical, structural, topographic and hydrographic surveying, as well as environmental. I get to work with massive equipment (like cranes) in the water. You have to like communication more than the typical engineer, since you have to communicate with people every single day.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
These are the main types of companies in the field.
- Design firms: Here you'd be a design engineer and your work would mainly involve engineering in the very beginning stages, so lots of drawing and pre-project planning and coordination. Basically all the stuff that happens before the action starts.
- Construction firms: Almost every type of civil engineer touches some type of construction. You can be the one designing it (at a design firm) or be the contractor building it (at a construction firm).
- Design-build firms: There are also firms that do both designing and building. Here, you'd get to take a project from start to finish.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
And these are the main types of roles you'd find.
- Geotechnical engineering: This is literally all about soil. At my internship, the company started us out in a warehouse full of soil samples. We'd feel them with our hands and classify them according to how they felt (e.g. "Silt feels really fine and falls off your fingers while clay lingers longer"). You'll also get to classify soil in lab tests. Personally, I found it very boring but it is definitely important work and great for people who like playing with dirt!
- Structural engineering: Structural involves building the framework of buildings, bridges, towers, etc. It's one of the hardest routes to go, because of how much work it is – there's a lot of building codes and city codes, a lot of AutoCAD work, a lot of intricate knowledge (knowing concrete and steel/rebar design). And you're responsible for a lot since you're building actual structures. I'd say this is for type A people.
- Environmental engineering: This is not for everybody, because it's mostly about cleanup. Think: Wastewater treatment systems. Personally, I find remediation dredging fun though - this involves digging up all the crappy, contaminated soil under a body of water such as a lake, river, or harbor.
- Water resources engineering: This is about managing and handling or preserving water, water waste, water management and processing for drinking water, irrigation, dealing with water supply issues, etc.
- Transportation engineering: These are the engineers who design our roadway systems, signals, traffic features, and other modes of transportation. They do studies to see what transportation routes are the best to create and how they will help the community they are built for, making sure roadway signage and signals are the proper sizes and meet all Department of Transportation requirements.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
You can find plenty of internships on Prosple. We have a vast selection of internships curated for students like you. Just filter 'til you find the right fit!
My main advice is to be confident.
A lot of people on the other side just got sent to it because they're in HR or they're a random engineer that happened to be available (or they're working on a project near your school).
You never know who's going to be on the other side of the table. Just pretend you're talking to your dad. You respect him (hopefully) so you won't say anything that stupid or be a slouch.
Also, make sure you're somewhat knowledgeable about the company and can ask questions about it.
Weed out companies you don't care about. Do some research on the ones you do care about. You'll stand out. Of course, don't recite a list of facts about the company.
Point something out that interests you and ask questions about something you want to confirm. For example:
- "I see you have a Costa Mesa office - Do you have opportunities to do an internship out there?"
- "I've checked your website and seen that your projects are focused in the South Florida area. Do you have opportunities there?"
- "I've seen some of your projects and am interested in learning more about [some field] within civil engineering. I wanted to see if you have an internship in [this specific field]."
In general, it looks good when you ask questions, because a lot of students expect employers to do all the talking. So it's impressive when the student knows what they're talking about (or is making an effort to) and are asking questions about, say, what the employer's looking for. It shows you care and you want to learn more about what they're doing.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
For more tips on leaving an impression, check out A student's guide to a great career fair.
For entry-level roles, we mainly look at your degree and your relevant experiences. The point of your resume is to say "I have this degree and relevant internship experience to further my studies" and "Hire me because I've already accomplished XYZ."
For interns, just make sure your resumes shows you have an interest in the field or an eagerness to learn. The point of your resume is to say "Here's what I'm going to school for. I'm gaining some experience in school and trying to gain experience in this internship if you hire me."
In terms of what experience we look for in interns, make sure you do workshops or take elective classes or work in a lab where you get get hands-on experience working in a certain niche.
And make sure you proofread! I can't tell you how many times I've seen typos!
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
For more tips on writing resumes, check out How to craft a winning resume as a college student.
It's always impressive to see a cover letter, but for an internship, I'd say cover letters aren't as necessary unless you're going for the top-tier design firms who tend to care about this more.
For normal or mid-tier or construction firms, they're not going to care about a cover letter. Internships are more casual and they don't know if they're going to hire you full-time anyway. When you're going for a full-time job though, they may be impressed by a cover letter.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
Here's what to expect for internship interviews.
Internship interviews are more casual than interviews for full-time roles. Employers don't expect you to know anything, so they're not grilling you as hard. After all, depending on what year you're in, you may not have gotten that much into the field yet.
Employers are more interested in talking to you about your future and what you want to learn. They'll ask questions like:
- "Where do you see yourself in five years?"
- "Have you thought about where you want to have a career?"
Personally, I also ask random questions to throw people off. This gives me an idea of:
- How quickly you think on your feet. If you're quick in conversation and come up with an answer for an out-of-the world question and you still come up with a good answer, that's very impressive. You'd probably do the same thing with problems and wouldn't take forever to get back to a client. You probably also learn quickly.
- How quickly you learn.
- How efficient you are: Efficiency is very key in engineering since the field works so fast. Companies are businesses and time is money. If a company can get someone to do the same job at the same quality in half the time, you're out. (That said, there are some slower thinkers who are brilliant and figure things out that nobody else does. But usually, if you're that much of a brainiac you're also decently fast as well. The slower pace is tied to more of a distracted personality which is not as favorable, since companies want you to be focused and productive.)
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
For full-time roles, employers have higher expectations.
For an actual position (where you haven't done an internship for them), the interview will be a little harder. You're supposed to be more knowledgeable and you're supposed to have already done a couple internships. So they're more asking you about your internships and learning about what experience you already have. They want to know:
- Why should we hire you?
- What would you bring to this company?
- Do you see yourself in a long-term position with us? (Most companies will need to invest in your training, so the longer you stay, the better.)
One company asked me very frankly if I saw myself working there long-term. They shared that most of the team had been there for 10-15 years, which is why they were very interested in tenure.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
Remember to relax and be yourself!
Try to relax and not be nervous!
When I started my first job, I realized the people who had interviewed me were way goofier than I was ever was. I was like "What was I so scared of?!" The workforce has changed so much from even ten years ago. People are a lot more flexible and want to have an enjoyable workplace. There's more personality even from the higher-ups.
And we want to enjoy the conversation. We don't want to be miserable talking to you, if we're going to be working together afterwards.
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience
Here are our best tips for answering the most common interview questions:
For more tips, see Smart questions to ask at your next internship interview.
If you like who you're working with and what you're doing, you're most likely going to get an offer unless you're doing a terrible job.
The company usually has evaluations, where your supervisors and managers would talk to you about your performance and ask you questions like "Do you like the job so far?" or "Are you happy here?" If you like the job, express how you feel and ask them what the long-term career path would look like.
You can also assess how much they'd want you to come back by asking "After I finish this internship, do you think I'm ready for this position?" (This is a great question because you can also get advice on what you would need to do for positions like this.)
If you did really well, you could even ask for a raise in the same conversation! Intern pay isn't that high. I was only making $14-16/hour. If they're interested in you, I'd definitely ask for a raise: "I feel like I've been doing a good job and my performance review reflects, so I think it's justified that I ask for X amount until I get an offer."
– Civil engineer with 5+ years of experience