Postings for internships spike every January and often start to decline during March, so students who plan to intern this summer should start looking now.

There are thousands of internships for students listed on Indeed; we’ve outlined tips and strategies below to help identify the right one for you.

Searching for an internship on Indeed is similar to searching for jobs. Type the keywords into the what search box describing the kind of internship you want. For example, you could enter: Accounting internship.

Add a city, state, or zip code to the where box to search in a specific location.

To search for internships at a specific company, enter the company name and internship in the what search box.  For example – IBM internship

You can narrow your search results using the refinement links in the left margin, or by adding more keywords to the what box.

Additional tips and video tutorials on how to perform an effective search are available on our Job Search Tips page.

Stay organized

Keeping track of your internship search activity and applications is essential for staying well-organized.

Be sure to create a my.indeed account to save and manage your searches and internship postings. For easy categorization, add notes and tags such as “applied” or “interviewed” to your saved internships.

You can also save searches as an email Job Alert or as an RSS feed to have new internships matching your search criteria automatically delivered to you.

Click the Email Job Alerts and my.indeed account links on our Job Search Tips page to view instructional videos

Identify opportunities

Researching different industries and segments can be helpful if you’re not sure what career path is right for you.  Industry Employment Trends and Job Trends will help you identify the fastest growing industries and segments.

Indeed’s Top Job Trends show the fastest growing opportunities of 2010, indicating exciting new areas of employer demand. Enter any keyword into the Job Trends search box to see its trend; click Find Jobs to view current postings and select the internship refinement.

No matter what industry or segment you’re considering, remember to attend campus networking events and take advantage of the internship resources your college career center provides.

We’ve analyzed millions of job postings to identify the Top Job Trends of 2010.  The list comprises the fastest growing keywords contained in job postings last year, and illustrates the rapidly emerging demand for information technology and social media skills.

Top Job Trends

1.  HTML5
2.  Mobile app
3.  Android
4.  Twitter
5.  jQuery
6.  Facebook
7.  Social media
8.  iPhone
9.  Cloud computing
10. Virtualization

Job postings for HTML5 – the next major revision of HTML – skyrocketed last year, allowing it to displace Twitter as the #1 job trend.

Five keywords from the Top Job Trends of 2009 made the 2010 edition: Twitter, iPhone, Facebook, cloud computing, and Social media.

Mobile app, Android, jQuery, and Virtualization joined HTML5 as newcomers to the top 10.

The following keywords didn’t make the Top Job Trends list, but showed notable growth in 2010:

Information technology – Sharepoint, Drupal, SEO

Healthcare - Speech language pathologist, Wellness, Clinical research

Business - Loss prevention, Sustainability, Compliance, Leadership development, Supply chain

Enter any keyword into Indeed’s Job Trends search box to see its trend; click Find Jobs to view current postings.

January Industry Employment Trends show job postings declined month-over-month in 11 of the 12 industries we track.  Month-over-month declines occurred in 7 industries during December, and in 6 industries during November.

Real estate was the only industry to experience positive month-over-month job posting growth in January, but continues to have the least number of job postings.  Property manager maintained its position as the top real estate keyword search performed by job seekers.

Job postings decreased in all 12 industries over the prior quarter, 11% on average.  The largest quarterly decline came in retail, at -18%.  Retail job postings received more clicks from job seekers in January than during any month in 2010.  The 15,178,839 clicks were the most among all industries last month.

Job postings in every industry remained significantly higher than a year ago.  All 12 industries had year-over-year job posting growth of at least 14% last month; seven industries increased by 50% or more year-over-year.  Transportation had the largest year-over-year gain in job postings for the 9th straight month, with a 125% increase in January.

January 2011 Industry Employment Trends

Industry	Job Postings	Month Change
Accounting	151,061	-7%
Construction	110,365	-5%
Education	110,657	-7%
Financial Services and Banking	262,249	-8%
Healthcare	683,463	-6%
Hospitality	97,046	-27%
Information Technology	362,861	-7%
Manufacturing	115,671	-13%
Media and Newspaper	47,693	-6%
Real Estate	32,865	1%
Retail	360,048	-18%
Transportation	117,854	-22%

Be sure to check back each month for updated Job Market Competition and Industry Employment Trends reports – leading indicators for the job market in 2011.