How to Find a Good Internship or SIWES Placement

The placement you get is mostly a function of how early and how widely you move. Talent has very little to do with it.

Start earlier than you think you should

Begin three to four months before the attachment period. Organisations plan intake ahead, and the good ones fill up first. If your school gives the letter late, do not wait — write your own application and attach the school letter when it arrives.

Early also means less competition for the same handful of well-known companies everybody in your department is chasing.

Where placements actually come from

In my experience, in rough order of success rate:

1. People you already know. Family friends, church or mosque members, alumni, your parents' colleagues, your neighbours. Tell everybody what you are looking for. Most placements in Nigeria come from someone knowing someone.
2. Small and medium businesses. They rarely receive applications and often need free hands who can think. You also get real work instead of watching.
3. Lecturers and departmental contacts. Many have industry links and are asked for good students. Being the student who attends and asks questions pays off here.
4. Direct walk-in with a letter. Still works, especially in industrial estates and smaller firms. Dress properly, ask for the HR or admin officer, submit, take a phone number.
5. Online listings. LinkedIn, Jobberman, company career pages, Twitter/X threads. Competitive but worth checking weekly.

Apply to at least twenty places. Not three. Twenty. Rejection here is volume-driven, not personal.

Write an application they will actually read

One page, plain, specific. Structure:

• Paragraph 1: who you are, course, level, school, and the exact period you are available.
• Paragraph 2: why this organisation, in one honest sentence about what they do.
• Paragraph 3: two or three things you can already do — software, lab skills, writing, data entry, design, repairs.
• Paragraph 4: a clear ask and your phone number and email.

Attach a one-page CV. Name the file properly: Musa-Ibrahim-SIWES-Application.pdf, not New Doc 4 final2.pdf. Address a human being where possible, not "To whom it may concern".

A quick comparison of placement types

Type	Pros	Watch out for
Large corporate	Structure, brand name on CV, allowance	You may be one of forty interns doing filing
Small business	Real responsibility, close to decision makers	Little supervision or structure
Government agency	Stable schedule, good for public-sector interest	Slow processes, long idle periods
Startup	Broad exposure, fast learning	Unpaid or irregular pay, chaotic
Remote/online	No transport cost, flexible	Data and light costs, scams

Choose by what you want to learn, not by whose logo looks best in your logbook.

Avoiding scams

Real placements do not ask you for money.

• Never pay a "processing fee", "training fee", or "ID card fee" to be accepted.
• Be suspicious of offers that arrive by WhatsApp from unknown numbers with big salaries.
• Verify the company: address, website, phone number, CAC registration if you can.
• Tell someone where you are going for any first physical meeting, and meet at the office, not a hotel.

Making the months actually count

Getting in is half. Many students finish attachment with a signed logbook and nothing else.

• Arrive early and dress well. In the first two weeks, reputation is set.
• Ask for work. "Is there anything I can help with?" repeated daily makes you useful.
• Learn one hard skill. Excel to a real standard, a specific machine, a design tool, a lab technique. Pick one and get good at it.
• Keep a weekly log of what you did and what changed because of it. This becomes CV lines and interview stories.
• Write your logbook daily, not the night before submission. It shows.
• Build relationships. Learn people's names. Say thank you. Two references from here can carry your first three years.

Ask for feedback and a reference

In your final two weeks, ask your supervisor two things: what you did well, and what you should improve. Then request a reference letter or permission to list them as a referee while you are still fresh in their memory. Save their phone number and email; people change jobs.

If you cannot find a placement

Do not sit idle. Build something you can show:

• Volunteer with a school, hospital, NGO, church or mosque office in your field.
• Do free or cheap work for a small business — a shop's records, a salon's social media, a landlord's rent tracking.
• Complete a serious online course and finish a project with it.
• Help in a family business and treat it seriously enough to measure results.

Any of these gives you evidence. Evidence is what an interview panel wants.

Where are you sending your first five applications this week?