What would be your advice to a young student (e.g. a college freshman) looking to get a meaningful internship in
I've experienced firsthand how valuable such early experience can be, but unfortunately the process I went through to get my first couple internships isn't generally applicable.
How do you sell yourself to a company when your experience is limited?
Ask your colleagues from the previous years where they did their internship at. Then ask who was the contact there and contact this person directly by phone. You also need to make sure when you contact someone to let them know how you got their contact information.
Establish the contact by phone first rather than by e-mail. Do not send your resume until being asked to do so. Refine your resume based on the phone conversation. Never send a boilerplate resume. Always have it peer reviewed and tailored to your contact.
Pursue many opportunities for internship until you are sure you have nailed one.
Have linkedin profile and start connecting.
EDIT: Involve yourself in an open source project!
Good luck!
I don't know where you live or where you go to school, but those are two opportunities.
Contact companies (and government agencies) in your area to see if they hire interns for the summer months, if you are going to be living at home during the summer vacation periods.
Also, my university has an office dedicated to internships. Although they are geared toward helping the people who require one find one (as most majors at my university require an internship or two), they will help any university student. Your university might have something similar. If not, contact your department for information.
The biggest hurdle that I find is that even when companies have an internship program it's often not published at all. For a bigger corporation, you can spend weeks even trying to track down the proper person to send a resume to, especially if the internship goes outside of normal HR channels.
This is why exploiting your social network is so important. Ask every single person you know who has interned where they interned and how they heard about the job. Ask your school's career center for every applicable internship that students from your school have ever received. Finding out who to contact is half the battle.