InternshipRatings.com

By Francine Blume, PhD
Director of Experiential Education
American University, Washington, DC

You’ve amazed, delighted and thrilled! You’ve saved a multi-million dollar account! You’ve prevented international incidents!

Or maybe you caused an international incident. Ooops.

Whether you’ve shined, maintained, or had challenges, there are things you need to have done before you walk out those internship doors for good.

Ask for feedback

Know what the organization is going to say about you, good and bad. Make sure you have at least one opportunity for an evaluation before you leave. Ask your supervisor about your strengths, areas where you grew, and areas that you should continue developing. Be open, don’t argue if you disagree. This isn’t the time. (If your supervisor has facts completely wrong, be very diplomatic about setting the record straight. Ideally, any conflicts would have already surfaced and been addressed.) Ask for examples if you aren’t clear what your supervisor means. Definitely thank your supervisor for the feedback, and if appropriate, ask if you can use him or her as a reference (see below).

Prepare for the next internship or job

Identify at least one person who would be willing to write you a letter of reference. Have it in your hand before you leave. Never give up your right to see what references say about you. (I had a friend that was using a reference repeatedly, but unbeknownst to him, the reference was very negative, and he had a terrible time getting jobs.) If you’d like to come back, either as an intern or an employee, express that. And if there won’t be openings, be sure to ask about other individuals and organizations with whom you may want to network. Ask about professional associations that you might want to join, and events that might be interesting. As soon as you can, update your resume to include this most recent internship.

Leave on the best of terms

You want them feeling great about you after you’ve left, and not grumbling because they’re cleaning up after you. Make sure all your work is done, or at least at a stage that can easily be handed off to someone else with clear instructions. Gather an informal portfolio of your work products, and make sure you have permission to use them. Thank everyone with whom you worked and interacted. Thank you notes on cards are always appreciated and stand out from emails. Keep in touch from time to time with an email, letting them know what you’re up to. This applies whether or not you had a positive experience, because you never know when and how you’ll run into these people again.

Spread the word!

If you had a great experience, tell your friends! Tell your department! Tell your Career Center. Make a video! Blog! If you wouldn’t recommend the site, definitely tell your school, but be discreet about putting anything negative in public forums with your name. Be as constructive and professional as you can. And, of course, rate your internship at InternshipRatings.com!

Then it’s on to the next adventure! Good luck!

By Michael True

Director of Internship Center

Messiah College 

Much of what we do in life involves first impressions.  Oftentimes, the first impression an employer has of us is the email we send to them with our resume.  Of course, that just begins the long road of email correspondence.  Use care when composing emails.  Your supervisor and co-workers will appreciate it.

* Do not send anything that you would not be comfortable seeing in tomorrow’s headlines. Email is more like a postcard than a sealed envelope with a letter in it.

* Treat email like any other business communication; watch your spelling and grammar as your communications skills will come through in your email.  Do not use instant message or texting abbreviations.

* Read what you write before you send it.

* Break up the text by using short lines and paragraphs; this makes it easier for the recipient to read.

* Be sure to fill in the “Subject” line with concise and informative language; this allows the recipient to file, prioritize, and retrieve easily. It is considered rude to leave the subject line blank.

* Writing in all UPPERCASE and or BOLD letters is considered SHOUTING at the recipient.

* Do not forward or edit an email without the original sender’s consent.

* Do not send chain emails. These are emails that tell you to forward the information to many other people.

* Remember that all laws that pertain to discrimination, defamation, and harassment (verbal, emotional, and sexual) pertain to electronic communication as well.

 

Remember, the #1 skill employers look for in new hires is excellent communication - written and verbal.  Email is in that writing skill category.

Best wishes!

 

By Heather Krasna, 

Director of Career Services, Evans School Of Public Affairs

University of Washington 

We’ve all had that dream where you see yourself sitting down to take a midterm exam, but you completely forgot to study for the class.  Second only to this nightmare is the one where you try really hard to get an internship, only to find out that the one you accepted wasn’t “worth the coffee.”™ 

Sometimes it’s easy to tell that the internship isn’t what you were expecting: your employer is asking you to pick up his/her laundry, it’s been made clear to you that you will continue filing papers no matter how much you’d like to learn, or the supervisor has said something downright disrespectful to you.  If that’s your situation, skip to the last paragraph of this post.  Sometimes, though, it’s worth taking a moment to think about what does make an internship worthworth doing and whether there might be something you could do to make your internship more worthwhile.

First off, try to be open-minded in the beginning of your internship.  Sometimes you have to prove yourself before the employer will trust you with juicy projects or recognize your capability, and sometimes an employer just hasn’t thought through what an intern like you might be capable of.  If you spend the first few weeks doing your best job, being eager to take on new projects, and trying to be enthusiastic, hopefully the employer will naturally begin to trust you with more and more interesting work.  Once you’ve been at the internship for a little while, though, the time it ripe to ask yourself some questions. 

Is your internship helping you: 

• • learn new skills, 
• • build networking contacts, 
• • build positive references, 
• • add to your resume, 
• • get a firsthand look at potential employers, 
• • possibly lead to a full-time job, 
• • decide whether or not you like this type of work, or 
• • decide if you like your possible major?  

If you said “no” to some of these questions, is there anything you could possibly do to change that answer to a yes?  For example, are you waiting for your boss to introduce you around, or do you think you could take the initiative and introduce yourself to some of your colleagues to improve your network?  Or, if you approach your supervisor in a polite and eager manner, and mention how much you would love to learn about their marketing plan (or whatever), could your internship supervisor perhaps be impressed with your initiative and give you more exciting things to do?

If, however, you said no to each question, and have also tried whatever you can to improve your situation, and have been gettinggotten nowhere, then you have to make a tough decision.  Is it worth suffering through this internship just to put something on your résumé?  Do you think you would at least get a good reference from your supervisor, or are things so bad that you should just cut your losses?  

If you actually feel so uncomfortable that you can’t bring yourself to continue working at the company, then it’s probably time to quit.  Try talking it over first with a friend, a professor, or a career counselor at your college’s career center.  If you are registered to receive college credit for the internship, definitely make your professor aware of the situation ASAP (you might get an incomplete grade in the class, but most professors won’t punish you for getting into a bad internship situation).  Start looking around for a new internship and see what’s available.  Many companies post internships throughout the year, so you may be surprised what’s available mid-semester.  If it’s too late to get another internship this semester, start looking at next semester and focus on your search for a new opportunity.  And  if you got your bad internship through your college’s career center, it’s essential to tell your college’s internship coordinator so that future students won’t also suffer– and don’t forget to rate your internship at InternshipRatings.com!

By Adam Zand
Consultant

Everything I learned about Interning, I learned during meetings – and from listening to Howard Stern.

On May 7 Antonio Pierce, a linebacker for the N.Y. Giants with an interest in broadcasting, did a one-day internship at “The Howard Stern Show.” His tasks included answering phones, teaching staffers how to throw a football and finally towel snapping “Sal and Richard” of the show who had scammed him earlier in the day with prank calls and requests for coffee. As he told the crew, “I figured, win the Super Bowl, do some more hard work.” Being a New England Patriots fan and someone who considers Stern and his crew to be members of my family, I’m even more jealous of this guy. My revenge is that I’m going to share some internship success advice (when you hear that “a” word, do as Chris Rock advises and “Run!!!”) with you. I’ll be upset if anyone shares it with Antonio.

Get invited to meetings
Asking to attend a meeting will get you noticed. Folks at your job will actually be shocked. They all hate meetings – it’s the time of day when they think nothing happens. They exhibit this by bringing in a laptop (“I’m taking notes”) or sneaking peeks under the table at their BlackBerry. If you can get into the room, the magic of meetings can happen for you.

Listen and take great notes at meetings
As mentioned, the staffers hate these things. They really only want to hear themselves talk or impress a supervisor or delegate a task and get back to the safety of their desks, Aeron chairs. They dread getting assigned a new initiative in the meeting. So, how do you as the office nOOb help them survive the process? You take amazing notes and offer to share them when you go to their offices after the meeting concludes. They will appreciate this act of kindness and organization as they can check to see the brilliant things they said and make sure they weren’t assigned something or required to report results back to the boss.

Mind meld during meetings
Here’s the key point in this entire goofy article - The mind meld analogy (any old school Star Trek fans exist on www.InternshipRatings.com?) isn’t too far off. Your most important career development task is imagining what everyone is thinking and what motivates them in the meeting. Once you’ve solved this puzzle, you get to pick a few people to probe (a different sci-fi procedure) with questions about their day jobs and career path. Check how they present themselves in the meetings and later if you like what they do for work. If you do, then you probably want to mirror their behavior, actions and maybe their career path. Pay particular attention when your mentor proposes a new idea at a meeting that will make the company some money or save money or make the bosses look good. That might be another article from me, but those are the only three things that us “professionals” actually need to do at work to prosper!

Some day you get to host your own meetings
So, if you’re cruising on a rudderless intern ship, take immediate action before the summer ends (and you forget everything under a College-mandated haze of Red Bulls and “flavorings.”)
1. Get invited to meetings – especially the ones that have food
2. Listen and take great notes – bring a pen as old-timers like me get nervous when faced with the backs of glowing laptops
3. Mind meld during meetings – don’t stare or zone out too much as the meeting will eventually end.

For more information on meeting etiquette check out this article I was quoted in from Boston Business Journal and better yet stay in touch with me on Facebook, TalkShoe or Utterz.

Enjoy the meeting!

Cheers,
Adam Zand
ThisDudeAbides.Zand@gmail.com