The ol' college try: Making the most of your internship -- Career Center Blog

February 6, 2012

The ol' college try: Making the most of your internship

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By Randy Woods
NWjobs

For most college students and recent college grads, the old Catch-22 of job search -- you can't get a job without enough real-world experience, but you also can't get real-world experience until you get a job -- is one of the toughest obstacles to face when you first enter the employment market.

There is, however, one tool that can help break through this circular logic and give you a leg up on your text-addled, Xbox-addicted peers: the internship. Though most of them take place over the summer, many of the good internships already start filling up fast this time of year, so it's not too early to start searching.

Many internships don't pay, and even those that do usually don't pay very much. Also, these positions often entail most of the summertime grunt work that no one else wants to do at the organization. But the true value you will get will be experience in a professional office setting. If you take some extra initiative and network with your supervisors, you can often parlay your summer work into a full- or part-time paid position.

In the new, revised edition of her 2007 book, "Getting From College to Career," career expert Lindsey Pollak devotes a sizable portion of a chapter on how to get the most out of your internship. It's one thing to merely land an internship and do what you're told, she writes; it's quite another to make a memorable impression on a professional who has the power to give you a job.

Here are a few of Pollak's "Essentials of Internship Achievement" that every intern should strive for:

Don't get comfortable -- Once you learn the basic duties in your internship, such as filing, answering phones or fact-checking, it can be easy to fall into a rut that will help neither your supervisor nor your future prospects. Once you feel you've mastered an assignment, let your boss know and ask for another task that you haven't done before. "Internships are a great time to take risks, face your fears and challenge yourself to try something new," Pollak writes. After all, if you're going to mess something up, it's much more forgivable when you're an intern than when you're an employee.

Anticipate your next assignment -- In many internships, there will come a lull in between projects where you will not have much to do. This is not necessarily because there is no work available; it may be because your supervisor is just too busy to explain the next assignment. Instead of kicking back and waiting, Pollak suggests this is the time to go to your manager and ask: "What is a good thing for me to work on when you're busy and I have nothing specific to do?" It may only lead to more busy work, but more often than not, you will likely gain the admiration of your boss for displaying initiative, and you might get a more interesting and challenging assignment.

Talk to the rest of the staff -- Being an intern gives you a golden opportunity to seek access to a whole company full of professional contacts from which you would otherwise be cut off. If you have any down time during your typical day, ask your supervisor if you can set up a few informational interviews with those whose jobs look most appealing to you. "If you can, you should also set up a meeting with someone in the human resources department to talk about future full-time possibilities," Pollak writes. "This is a golden lead for your postcollegiate job."

Ask for references -- Many interns simply wait for their supervisors to write up reports about their performance and assume they will get a standard letter of recommendation, but that's not always the case. When you get to the end of your internship, ask you supervisor to write a recommendation and remind that person of the specific projects you worked on and achievements you have made during your tenure. Also, Pollak suggests asking your manager if it would be OK to get recommendations on your LinkedIn profile from other appropriate people in the office.

And it almost goes without saying that you should keep in touch with your supervisors and co-workers via e-mail, LinkedIn, Twitter or other social media as long as you can. The internship may last three to six months, but there's no reason the contacts you make there can't last for the rest of your career.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.