The self-made intern: Why Gen Zs are self-sourcing internships in the US

SINGAPORE – It took around 300 e-mails to more than 100 companies in the United States for Singaporean Jayce Lye, 25, to land his first self-sourced internship. This was at Maihem, a Y Combinator-backed software company headquartered in San Francisco in August 2024. 

Y Combinator is an American start-up accelerator that provides seed funding, guidance and networking to early-stage companies. It has helped launch home rental business Airbnb, live-streaming service Twitch and social media platform and online forum Reddit, among others.

For Lye, the effort was driven by a desire to work at the forefront of artificial intelligence security and safety, and to do so in the US, where much of the work in this field originates.

“I was very focused on the AI security and safety space, which looks at how to ensure AI models don’t get exploited and are safely and securely deployed,” says Lye, a final-year Singapore Management University (SMU) student studying information systems and digital business.

“A lot of this frontier technology work is done in the US. Naturally, that also means US companies tend to have an advantage in terms of the latest technologies and the best talents. It is why I was motivated to self-source for an internship there.”

His six-month internship at Maihem gave him the opportunity to learn, design and develop AI software alongside talented individuals in a team of five from all over the world – albeit remotely from Singapore.

He worked mostly from his Yishun flat bedroom – at times having to take calls at 11pm due to the time difference – and was unable to immerse himself in the work environment he had hoped to experience in the San Francisco head office.

“I feel the main difference between doing an internship in Singapore and in the US is experiencing the talent density and being among people who are comfortable with taking more risks and who move faster,” he says.

Determined to get that first-hand experience, Lye tried again.

Another 100 e-mails and scores of networking events later, he secured a four-month internship at American software start-up Mintara Labs from October 2025 to January 2026, while completing two semesters on an exchange programme at the University of California, Berkeley.

It was an unpaid internship, but he was just grateful for the opportunity to learn from other talented people in the field.

Lye is among a growing number of young Singaporeans taking charge of their own career paths by self-sourcing internships that match their interests and ambitions.

They are not waiting on their universities or career guidance counsellors to hook them up with existing industry attachments, and are actively hunting down their own leads and cold-e-mailing scores of companies.

For some, that search increasingly extends beyond Singapore.

The US, in particular, is a prime destination for those seeking work experience in emerging industries such as AI, cybersecurity and digital transformation, despite growing visa uncertainties and escalating global tensions.

This trend also reflects a broader shift among Gen Z undergraduates. Born between 1997 and 2012, these digital natives, who are aged between 14 and 29 and have grown up with unprecedented access to information and professional networks, are channelling a new-found resourcefulness and hunger to seek out opportunities beyond traditional school channels.

Huo Yasi, deputy director of SMU’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, estimates that the number of students who have successfully self-sourced their own internships doubled between May 2023 and August 2026. She says her department does not track numbers, but has observed a surge in inquiries around self-sourcing.

“There are students who know exactly what they want out of their internships and students who want to explore their options. In both cases, today, having the autonomy to choose is critical,” she says. 

Susanna Leong, deputy president (academic) and provost at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), describes students of today as being “more intentional in their career planning” and seeking internships that “provide both professional growth and personal development”.

She says: “We observe stronger interest in emerging industries, global exposure, interdisciplinary work, and organisations whose values align with their own, reflecting a generation that wants to make tangible contributions, not just observe.”

Pushing through uncertainty

The latent desire for a US internship in a cutting-edge firm, however, does not always align with what universities can presently offer.

SMU’s Huo says the school sees an average of around four US internship placements annually, but the number ebbs and flows depending on prevailing entry requirements to the US.

Visa requirements have also been particularly volatile under the Donald Trump administration, with multiple changes to student visa rules implemented over the past year.

One of the most recent changes was announced on July 16 and is set to take effect in September. It will introduce stricter visa rules for international students entering the US, including replacing open-ended periods of stay with fixed admission periods of up to four years.

Yet, such uncertainty has not deterred Nanyang Technological University (NTU) undergraduate Angelyn Lim, 29, from pursuing a self-sourced internship in New York.

She is on a six-month internship at Y Combinator-backed Rove Miles, a travel loyalty and rewards start-up, that ends in December. 

This is not her first internship in New York. 

In January, she embarked on a six-month school-sourced opportunity at a New York senator’s office where she gained exposure to working in a communications team. The largely administrative role she played made her hanker for a role with greater scope.

While working there, she hunted down internship opportunities in New York before returning to Singapore.

Lim estimates sending e-mails to around 28 US companies after connecting with hundreds of professionals on social networking platform LinkedIn.

“I was ghosted by more than 90 per cent (of the people I reached out to),” says Lim, who is in her third year reading linguistics and multilingual studies.

“I didn’t want an experience just for the sake of having it on my LinkedIn page. I’d rather have something I could actually learn from and for it to be a valuable experience, especially because I already had previous work experiences.”

Lim – who has held full-time corporate roles at Changi Airport Group and low-cost carrier Scoot, and worked as a flight attendant at national carrier Singapore Airlines for around two years – was advised to leverage her experience in the aviation industry. 

After refining her resume, she reached out to Y Combinator start-ups operating in the aviation industry.

One such start-up was Rove Miles. She e-mailed its founders, engineers and communications team personally. To her surprise, she received a favourable reply the following day.

Securing the internship was only the first hurdle. It took her around 2½ months to obtain a J1 visa, longer than the usual timeline of roughly a month, because of unexpected logistical and administrative issues.

The J1 visa in the US is a non-immigrant visa category for individuals approved to participate in work- and study-based exchange visitor programmes.

Lim has had to make other lifestyle and expectation adjustments.

“It is definitely not as safe in New York as it is in Singapore. But I know I’ll regret it if I don’t take up the opportunity to explore what is here, and to expand and grow, both personally and professionally,” she says. 

Appeal of going it alone

Like Lim, National University of Singapore undergraduate Travis Sim, 24, also participated in a school-sourced internship in New York before pivoting to a self-sourced opportunity. He is in his penultimate year of a double degree in computer science and business administration. 

From August 2025 to March 2026, he took up a software engineering internship at an AI start-up in the Big Apple. Interested in the niche crypto-trading industry, he attended networking events there and joined relevant Telegram groups to interact with start-up founders and find potential internship opportunities. 

In February, Sim sent an open appeal message in one of the groups – which had around 300 members – to ask if anyone was looking for an intern. To his surprise, he received one favourable reply.

“It was definitely out of my comfort zone to ask for an internship in a huge group chat because most of the people there are start-up founders. I don’t think there are many interns or students in those groups,” he says.

His unabashed request led to an interview with the co-founders and chief technology officer of crypto-trading app start-up Momentum, eventually leading to a four-month internship that paid US$3,500 (S$4,400) monthly.

For Sim, the appeal of living in New York was both professional and personal.

“I feel like New York is the financial capital of the world. Since I want to do something related to finance and start-ups, it was my top choice,” he says. 

For comparison, the US attracted US$541 billion in venture capital funding between June 2025 and June 2026, according to global data and intelligence platform Dealroom.co – the highest in the world. Singapore, in eighth place, raised US$8.6 billion.

But beyond New York’s vast economic clout and a high concentration of start-ups, Sim was drawn to the experience of living there.

“New York is featured in a lot of movies and it’s very iconic. Living there felt surreal. I stayed in the same street as the Empire State Building, and sometimes I’d walk out of my apartment building and see celebrities cycling past,” he says, adding that his salary barely covered the rent for his roughly 8 sq m room in a student accommodation building in 34th Street.

After deducting taxes, he estimates taking home around US$2,800, of which US$2,000 went to paying rent. In order to make the most of his time in New York, he dipped into his savings to pay for monthly expenses, which included sightseeing and domestic travel.

Despite the high living costs, it was an opportunity he knew he did not want to miss out on. “After travelling to other states like Washington, Boston and Philadelphia, I feel New York is where all the action is,” he says.

To self-source or not?

According to students whom The Straits Times spoke to, self-sourcing is particularly useful when looking for internships in emerging markets and niche industries. 

Such opportunities can be harder for universities to secure through established routes, particularly when they involve nascent industries or smaller companies unlikely to have internship programmes. 

As career paths become more diverse, educational institutions are also increasingly open to students sourcing for their own opportunities.

Gan Chee Lip, vice-provost for undergraduate education at NTU, says: “Building partnerships with overseas employers requires sustained engagement and considerable resources. In markets such as the US, where companies have access to a large pool of highly qualified local students seeking internships, competition for positions is especially strong. 

“We encourage students to complement the opportunities available through the university by proactively exploring and applying for suitable roles independently.”

Students like Sim understand the constraints faced by universities, particularly when only a very limited number of companies in attractive economies like the US might be open to hosting overseas students.

“Sometimes, we might get allocated jobs and industries that are not the most suitable for us. But at the internship I found on my own, I felt that the experience served me better,” he says. 

Self-sourcing also gives students greater control over what they sign up for. They can assess the scope of a role themselves, ask potential employers questions directly and decide whether the experience will contribute meaningfully to their career goals.

But that autonomy comes at a cost. Finding suitable companies, sending out dozens – even hundreds – of cold e-mails and attending networking events can take months. Students also have to contend with multiple rejections and manage their own expectations as to how soon, if at all, they get a response.

Lim says: “Many people would tell me that for every 500 e-mails, if I manage to get two replies and land one internship, I’m really very lucky already.” 

Sim adds: “The toughest part of self-sourcing was needing to keep on trying.” 

For most students, the support and certainty offered by school-sourced internships is preferred.

Undergraduate Ng Yuan Yuan, 24, who is in her final year reading communication and digital media at SIT, is now on an eight-month internship with American advertising agency Admerasia in New York until December. It was arranged by her university.

“I felt more confident knowing that I was going with a school-sourced option. If I was going on a self-sourced internship, I think I would have had to handle more on my own,” she says.

The school works with a US-based facilitator who provides help with visa applications and logistics, such as housing, and offers pastoral care to students while they are abroad. 

While Ng declined to reveal her internship pay, she says it is above US$2,000 a month, which she feels is about the market rate.

The same goes for Suresh Kumar Balavignesh, 25, a computing science undergraduate on a joint programme between SIT and the University of Glasgow, who completed an eight-month school-sourced internship at regulatory technology company Advanced GRC in New York from August 2025 to April 2026.

His internship paid US$2,800 a month – or around US$2,000 after taxes – of which US$1,000 went to his accommodation in New Jersey, a four-bedroom apartment he shared with three others. He commuted around 20 minutes to work in Manhattan via public transport.

The opportunity, which appeared on his school internship portal, aligned with his interests in software engineering and AI, and he went for it. To land it, he felt he had to edge out the competition only among his coursemates – and not the whole world.

“I feel that self-sourcing is a lot more competitive than going through a school. When I go through the school portal, I’m competing with just my peers and not every other student in Singapore,” he says. 

Tips for self-sourcing your own US internship

Self-sourcing an internship in the US can be highly competitive, but students who have successfully navigated the process say a strategic approach to networking, research and outreach can improve one’s chances.

Sim recommends using Luma, a free San Francisco-based events management platform, to identify relevant networking events and expand one’s professional networks. Through events he found on Luma, he connected with individuals in New York University’s Blockchain Lab, as well as professionals working in the AI and cryptocurrency industries.

“New York is definitely the centre of where all these decentralised finance crypto start-ups are located. By attending relevant events, I could meet founders, builders and operators in the space more easily,” he says. 

Lye recommends using AI tools to streamline research on prospective employers and identify their business challenges. This allows students to develop more targeted proposals and demonstrate during the interview process how their skills and experience can directly address a company’s needs.

“Try to tie your suggested solutions to your own experiences. Ideally, you should be able to convey why the opportunity is important and meaningful to you, as well as how you can best help the company,” he says.

“It will take up time, but with AI, it shrinks the amount of effort you need to put in for each company.”

Lim found that looking beyond conventional job platforms also expanded her options. She recommends checking the Y Combinator job portal, where opportunities at start-ups have already been vetted for legitimacy and have some financial backing.

Nothing beats the personal touch, she says. She suggests identifying founders or relevant team members and e-mailing them directly, rather than relying on generic company e-mail addresses. Use LinkedIn to identify the appropriate contact and reach out personally or research their professional background to better prepare for potential interviews, she advises.

The effort has been made worthwhile by the experience she gained in New York. “It is when you’re in a vastly different environment that you realise how people talk about different things and have a different perspective on life. Your world view changes,” she says. 

“I don’t want to settle. I know that there is so much more to learn out here and if I don’t try, I just won’t feel fulfilled.”