Internship Work

Internship Work - Experience

Internship-Work: Maintaining Your Track Record

 At your internship, you may feel that a lot of the work you are doing is meaningless and will provide no value to you in the future, but it is extremely unlikely that is the case.  Each piece of work you hand in to your bosses at a company is an example of what you are capable of; regardless of its significance, it can be something you show to potential companies in your future.  After doing so much busy work and assignments at an internship, it can be difficult to figure out where exactly everything you’ve done has ended up.  You definitely can’t rely on your organization to keep track of it for you, so you should figure out an efficient system of tracking your work along your own terms.

One good way to do this is simply carrying a flash drive with ample memory space on it.  Each time you compile work on a computer, just stick in your flash drive and quickly save the file onto it.  This way, you will always have backups on your person of the accomplishments you have made at any given position.  This method might not be for you, and an easy alternative is just backing up everything via email.  You can save the email exchanges to a folder in your email account by applying labels and folder organization parameters to the email addresses you are exchanging work with.  Someday, you will be glad you have all the work you produced in past internships when applying for a full time position in a firm.

Come Out Of Your Internship Work With 3 Things

College students have internships all over the country.  Your friends are probably doing different types of internship work wherever they are.  What are we supposed to get out of these “internships”?

My friend and I were talking about this and he had some pretty good advice on the matter.  He said, “Everyone should come out of the internship with at least three things that they’ve learned.”  If you learn three things during your internship work, then I would consider the internship a success.

If an employer asks you in an interview about what you learned while working as an intern, you should be able to talk there ear off.  If you have three solid, deep things that you learned in your internship, it will go a long way.

The three things in your internship can be about anything.  They can be from experiences, or they can be epiphanies that you had.  Either way, they should be a direct result of your internship work, and they should be solid and meaningful.

For instance, my friend who is interning for a Senator said he learned

1. That wants to run for office eventually
2. How to expand his professional network
3. How the U.S. political system actually works

I was intrigued by his experiences, and wanted to learn more about his internship work myself.  And I wasn’t even interviewing the guy. 

If you learn three solid, deep things during your internship and can talk about them, it will automatically tell people that you are smart enough to pick up on these things and that you take yourself seriously as a professional.

Think about what you’re learning in your internship work on a deep level and you’ll impress anyone who asks about what you did while you were an intern.  This will definitely make your internship work worthwhile.

Learning From Internship Work

What can you learn from your internship work?

If you go into your internship work experience with the right mindset, there’s a lot you can learn.  Before the first day of your internship, think about what you would want/expect out of interns if you had a few interns working for you over the summer.  What would an intern have to do for you to say that he or she did a great job over the summer?

I would expect an intern to be enthusiastic and be able to get things done.  Those are the basics.  Even if the interns have a tough task ahead of them, I would prefer the intern who said, “I tried this and this and this…this worked well…this was alright…” over the intern who says, “Yeah, I tried this and it didn’t work.”  An intern should be confident that he or she can handle any internship work that comes at them.

Now, what does this tell you about you and your internship work?  Well, for starters, it tells you to relax.  Stay calm and confident when you’re going about your internship and doing work.  Also, for the most part, expectations for summer interns aren’t exactly through the roof.  If you are fun to be around and get things done, it will be safe to say that your internship work has been a success.

Your internship work experience will be great to get you familiar with the industry.  Aside from the technical experience, it might be your first office experience in general.  Use this to think about what you want out of your professional career.  Do you want to work for a huge corporation or a small firm with a powerful idea?  Do you want to be a drone or do you want to make a difference?

Your internship work is your first glimpse into your professional career.  Keep your long-term goals in mind and think about how your internship work relates to them.

Intern Work

What is the goal of your intern work?

Does your intern work have a goal?  It should.  You should know what you’re working towards and what you want to have accomplished by the end of your internship.  If someone asks you what you did at your internship, you should be able to talk their ear off.

A lot of interns wander through their internships aimlessly, doing very little internship work.  If you do this, neither you nor the company will get anything out of it.  Have a goal for your intern work, and both you and your company will benefit.

Here is the best way I’ve found to approach your internship work after you have your goal.  Say you want to accomplish this goal by the end of your 10 week internship.  Ask yourself these questions.

What are you going to do to accomplish this goal in the next 10 weeks?

What are you going to do to accomplish this goal in the next 10 days?

What are you going to do to accomplish this goal in the next 10 hours?

What are you going to do in the next 10 minutes?

This process will motivate you towards accomplishing the goals of your internship work.  It will also keep you focused and driven.  You’ll always have your goal in mind, and your work will always have an aim.  It’s also very useful for big projects.  Sometimes, projects can seem so big that you don’t know where to begin.  By asking these questions, you’ll always relate the end goal of your intern work to what you can do NOW. Go do great intern work.

Have Your Interns Run Out Of Internship Work?

If you have run out of work for your interns, or are constantly finding them idle, then you are reading the right article.  What do expect out of internship work?  What do your interns expect out of internship work?  Of course, internship work should revolve around giving interns challenging projects and making them familiar with the company/industry.

Internship work should also focus on making interns be more confident and overcome any fear or anxiety they have.  Remember that these interns are in the work force for the first time.  This may even be their first experience in an office.  Anything you want to make them do is good experience for them!   Make them do fun things that will help them grow personally.  For instance, have an intern cold call a few sales leads that don’t really matter.  Neither of you have anything to lose, and it will be good experience for the intern.

Most interns are happy to have a job.  The purpose of an internship is to prepare interns for actual work.  So give them internship work that will make them confident and comfortable, and ready to nail their entry-level job.

You should come up with internship work that is fun for both you and your interns.  Who cares if the assignments are kind of tough?  Everyone benefits in the long run.  And your interns will have fun and be more excited to wake up and go to their internship every day.

Make Your Internship Work Worthwhile

Is your internship work worthwhile?  Are you benefiting the company?  Is your internship work experience benefiting you?

I heard a story about an Apple employee, not sure if it’s true or not.  Apparently, this person ran into Steve Jobs in an elevator.  You’d think this would be a great experience.  Jobs asks, “What exactly do you do here.”  Nervous, the employee gives a vague, unsure answer.  Jobs had the employee fired the next day.

While this is pretty harsh, it has some truth.  Think about this yourself.  You should be excited and energetic enough about your internship to be able to answer confidently if your CEO asks you what you do for the company.  If I were the CEO of your company, and I asked you what you do in your internship work, could you answer me?  Would your internship work sound worthwhile?

Make sure you know what you’re doing in your internship work and you know why you’re at your internship.  If you think about the goal of your internship work and how you’d explain it to your CEO, then your internship work will definitely be worthwhile.

You should go into your internship with the goal of working hard, benefiting the company, and doing worthwhile internship work.  If you don’t feel like you’re doing this, talk to your boss about what you can do to make your internship work more worthwhile.  If you are interning at a good company, your boss will admire your honesty and determination to help the company.  Any reasonable boss will get you on the right track to do some great internship work. So get out there and make your internship work worthy of presenting to the company CEO!

Make Your Own Internship Work

The best way to get noticed as an intern is to make your own internship work.  If you always find something to do, your co-workers will see that you are a hard worker.  And, you never run out of internship work.  If you make your own work at your internship, it really is a win-win situation.

There are a lot of things you can do to make your own internship work.  If you’re hours are from 9 to 5, show up a half hour early and leave a half hour late.  Ask any superiors if they need a hand doing anything.  Think about it.  The worst thing they can say is no.  And even if they do, they’ll appreciate you wanting to help out around the office.  If you help some people out by doing some extra work during your internship, your name will be fresh in their minds when they’re thinking about getting some entry-level hires from their internship pool.

Another thing you can do to make your own internship work is never waste a minute.  Ask your superiors of any books they would recommend to someone new to the industry.  If you have a few minutes of downtime or no immediate task to do, make these books the first priority of your internship work.

Another thing you can do is keep up with your company in social media.  Follow your company on twitter and keep up with them.  Join a group or become a fan of them on facebook.  Read the company blog.  Read some articles that your superiors have written.  This is easy compared to other internship work.

There are a lot of things you can do to get the most out of your internship work.  The best thing you can do to get the most out of your internship is to make your internship work.

Internship Work Value

One of the most difficult things about internships is understanding value as it relates to the time that you spend at the company. Let me give you a quick understanding - an intern is with a company for about 10 weeks on average, yet value may pay off long after the intern has left. We live in a day and age where we would like the provide internship work value overnight, but this is hardly realistic for any business.

For example, internship work value can include interns that are working on SEO for your website. If they are optimizing the website, their internship work value may not be seen for 3 months. This is tough to swallow for an intern that wants to produce immediate results. In the day an age of twitter and other tools, interns want to see these happen at the speed of light. Yet, great things are built over time and take careful management and upkeep wot cultivate.

Internship work value needs to be measured over time and goals need to be set that are realistic and there also needs to be seperate goals for immediate returns versus long term. Good luck with your internship.

What Kind Of Internship Work Do You Want?

If you are in college looking for an internship, you probably want the best internship work you can get.  A lot of people rush blindly into the internship hunt without thinking about what they really want.  You need to ask yourself if you want a great internship work experience or work at a big employer and have a mediocre experience.

Interning for a huge employer doesn’t automatically translate into a great internship work experience.  You could be doing nothing but sending faxes and other forms of menial labor.  However, some people would do this in order to slap a big company name on their resume.  We’re hoping you aren’t as shallow as these people, and you want more out of your internship work experience than the prestige of working for a big company.

We’re not saying that all big companies run terrible summer internship programs.  A lot of them run fantastic programs.  For instance, Under Armour and Google run great internship programs.  But this isn’t always the case.

When you go into your internship work search, don’t come out of the gates sprinting.  Figure out what kind of work you want to do and what your passion is.  In your internship interviews, get a feel for what your internship work will be like.  If you have the opportunity to work for a big employer, but the work seems menial and vague, you might want to hold off.  If you can work for a small company where you can make a difference and learn a lot personally, you should seize this opportunity.  That is the best way to make the most out of your internship work experience.

Incorporating Internship Work Into Your Curriculum

If you’re looking at internships in your area, chances are you are enrolled in a college or university full time.  You are getting your academic experience in the classroom, and an internship in your desired career field would be a perfect complement to your college experience.  This is a very common goal for students at the college level.  With the increased competition among students in recent years, each student feels that he/she needs to add some serious experience to the resume.  This is a valid concern for all students, but a huge obstacle to this aspiration is the lack of time that students tend to realize while at school.

No one wants to just study all the time; nearly every college student is involved in several extra curricular activities to keep things interesting.  With such packed schedules, students often find great difficulty incorporating an internship into each semester.  The good news is that many schools are offering opportunities to students to either merge classes with their internships, or receive academic credit each semester for the internships they are fulfilling.  This credit is usually only given out when a student writes a thesis about the job opportunity, but this is a small price to pay for getting academic credit.

If you are fulfilling an internship without receiving academic credit, you should seek your academic adviser immediately to see what can be done to receive the credit you deserve.  Let’s be honest, there are many things you can learn from an internship that you can’t learn in a classroom, so you may as well be getting credit for your work. Internship work is a great way to get the beginning of your career started! Best of luck.