How To Find a Quality Internship in Hong Kong? (A Global Business Boost)

Want to take your experience from paper and dorm rooms to real world experience?

An experience is a great way to do that – and especially in a global city in Hong Kong.

For me, internships during my time in college helped me define what it was I liked (and DIDN’T LIKE – which is almost more important) about “work”. An internship is a chance to spend a few months inside of a company without long term commitments of a full time employment contract.

Today’s guide is geared towards Hong Kong market interns, but can be applied to any hungry entrepreneurial minded college student looking to boost their career through internships.

So buckle up, and let’s go through some ideas on how to find your dream internship in HK.

I love hearing from readers, especially those who support the Global From Asia movement through purchasing one of our products. I received this email from Julius, a fun one!

So he agreed that I answer his message through a proper blog post so that we can help more people in the long term.

Before you dive into job directories and start digging deep into it – what is your goal? There are a few I can think of:

Probably you have a mix of requirements above. I would suggest actually writing it down, in a journal, and remembering that during your internship job hunt.

I know, I sound like Gary Vee over here – but hustle is important when finding a summer internship. From my own blog, I get quite a few emails from young and hungry college students looking to soak up as much knowledge and experience in their summer break. Its exciting for sure! But just sending a few resumes around will only get you so far.

Stand out!

Like Julius did, send a personal email. Read the company’s blog posts (or take their paid video course – ha!) and then when you reach out to them you’re not just sending them a mail merge study mass message. I don’t think I’m alone when I read cold emails and decide if this person has spent at least 5 minutes reading my company about us page before emailing.

It really doesn’t take that much extra time to stand out!

It still amazes me how most people are so lazy – and probably shy – to spend a few extra minutes on checking for a job opening background.

All too often, company executives are too busy to think about what kind of tasks to give a new summer intern.

Make your own summer internship.

Review their company website, see a “project” that you can tackle and suggest it to them. This goes for internships, but also full time jobs. The company’s management will be amazed that a young college student can see opportunities to improve their business and it will be a no brainer for them to ask you to come in.

If you go back up and re-read Julius’s email – he asked me if I knew anyone. That’s a good way to start to branch out – as a referral or introduction is great. But you should also suggest what kind of work you’d like to do, and exactly what your goals are. As someone on the internet it is hard to know what their intentions are.

But even if your dream employer isn’t hiring, follow up and ask if they know other companies that may be interested in you for an internship opportunity. This is good old fashioned networking, and should also be included in the #hustle section above.

Of course, platforms exist to help these 2 sides match – the hungry and able bodied intern with the corporation looking for young talent. There is more opportunity in Hong Kong for internship platforms, but I will list a few directories and resources to get you started

AM-AZED: We had Anna and Constantine on the podcast talking about finding an internship in Hong Kong – they are from AM-AZED which is a platform specifically to help college students and recent graduates (millennials ) find their dream job and achieve their goals in life.

WHUB – A growing community of startups in Hong Kong providing plenty of opportunities to interns in their job platform. Whub is growing fast and I am sure as you read this will have even more opportunities there for your internship.

Start Base HK – More like an Angel List of Hong Kong – this is a database of local HK startups. No job board that I can find for now, but the idea is that you can search through targeted companies you would want to work for now,, and then #hustle and reach out to them manually.

Our GFA Job board – We launched a job directory – where we are gathering more and more job opportunities, from full time to part time to internship. Check it out – create a free profile, and even ask HK startups you find that don’t have a listing to use our free resource!

InvestHK.gov.hk – The InvestHK division of the HK government is a special division servicing local startups. It is worth sending them a note about your interest to come to Hong Kong and do an internship. Their angle is to help the local startup and innovation community, and if you are a technical or marketing talent, they would love to have you add value to the ecosystem for a summer opportunity.

I’m so excited you made it through the intern guide with me today. Thinking back to my own college days and the hunt for the ideal internship, I remember how hard it was. Try to put yourself in the employer’s shoes – you are only able to work a couple months. What is the ROI on that? They need to spend time recruiting, and then interviewing and selecting. Once they find intern(s) they then need to train them and get them work to do. While this may make you laugh – it is a big undertaking! Larger companies have HR department dedicated to this, but if you want to work for a growing tech startup – they don’t have these resources.

So my biggest advice is to reduce the decision making barrier as much as possible. Create your own internship there. Think of a 2 month project that you can start and finish during your time at the company. For example:

Really, the sky’s the limit. But a goal is to show them you are independent, and can work without too much oversight. Take it from me, as an overworked, underpaid blogger – if you suggest you can take a project and run with it without much management from me – how can I say no?

Best of luck on your internship hunt. Keep me posted with updates, as well as other resources, in the comment section below.