How to Find Success at Your Internship

While this piece is relevant for remote internships during the summer of 2020, the advice can be widely applied to any internship.

Source: Bruce Anderson on LinkedIn Talent Blog

So you’ve just landed an internship – congratulations! What are the steps you can take to succeed in your role?

1. Define your goals for the summer.

One of the questions you’ll probably receive a week into the internship from your manager will be: “What are your goals for this summer?” Orienting yourself around several goals at the start of your internship will help you achieve long-term success. Sometimes your goal may be just an introduction into the industry (and a determination of whether you would like to do this long-term or not); other times it may be developing a set of skills (ex. marketing, financial modeling, communication, and etc.). To start, I’d orient your goals around three priorities: 1) what skills do you want to gain at the end of the internship, 2) how does this internship fit into your long-term career path, and 3) are there program-specific KPI’s that I need to meet? The third question depends on your internship – for instance, this could imply a certain number of engagements you’re looking to reach on social media if you’re a marketing intern. More generally, this could be a number of weekly projects you would need to fulfill. At your first meeting with your manager, you should ask about their expectations for you in order to better understand how you should carve out this goal.

2. Grab coffee with colleagues!

Getting to know the people around you is important as it’ll help you find whether the firm is a strong cultural fit. It’s also a great way to have people advocate for you when you’re seeking a return offer later in the summer. But how does networking even work? Unless you have unnaturally good people skills – rest assured, most undergrads aren’t in that position – networking takes some practice. Here’s a tried and true process to follow: 1) research some alumni at your company or people whose career paths are of interest (it’s great to start with younger professionals who are generally more accessible in availability and age), 2) email them and set up a calendar invite to lock down the date, 3) research their career and prepare a list of 5-6 questions beforehand, and 4) send a thank you note afterwards and ask if they can connect you to someone else at the firm. The last step will help make the process of networking a bit more organic. I can’t emphasize enough the significance of networking. Even though you may not be returning to the firm, it’s still a good idea to keep in touch with these individuals because later down the line, you never know – you might find an opportunity where it’d be helpful to connect with that coffee chat from a few years ago!

3. Communicate with your manager.

This year, more than ever, communication is important. In most in-person internships, interns generally sit close to the manager, so they’re able to easily access them and ask any questions that pop up. At the same time, the manager will able to get a clear view of what work the intern is doing. In a virtual internship, you simply don’t have that facetime available. In lieu, make sure you set up a weekly one-on-one with your manager to receive feedback. During these sessions, it’s helpful to not just prompt a general question like “Do you have any feedback for me,” but target it towards a specific project or goal on which you’re working. You can even contextualize your question by adding a statistic to showcase what work you’ve done. Here’s an example: “I’ve worked on X project, making Y improvements. Do you have any feedback around the time I’ve spent on the project or improvements I should look to make?” Use this time to also get to know your manager and learn about how they ended up in their role. Again, this goes back to networking, and understanding how you can naturally integrate it into an internship. Pro tip: sending weekly email updates to your manager is a good way to show you’re being proactive as well.

4. Attend as many events as you can.

Most internships will have several social or career events for interns. Attend as many of these as you can! Again, this is your opportunity to learn about the firm and decide whether it’d be somewhere you’d want to work full-time. It’s also an effective way to connect with students your age and build a professional network with them. In addition, for the events where you listen to leadership at the firm, you often will get a sense of the firm’s priorities, as well as the individual’s career path and career advice. What if there aren’t any of these events planned? If you have a recruiter, I’d speak to that individual politely to inquire on whether it’d be possible to plan any sort of events / Zoom calls to get to know other interns or executives at the firm. Lunch and learn events are popular across many companies, where employees can come listen to leadership speak on a topic, with space for Q&A – that’s definitely something you can ask to your recruiter.

5. Connect with fellow interns.

One of the best parts of an internship is getting to make new friends! Think of your intern class as a leadership network. It’s essentially a group of selected students who may be leading similar companies in the future! Take time to get to know your fellow interns, hear about what they’re up to at school, and connect with them on LinkedIn. Try to arrange weekly intern hangouts or game nights if possible as they’re casual ways to connect. What if you don’t have any fellow interns? There are plenty of online intern communities that you can Google, and they often live on Slack. Interns will host professional or casual events, and these groups can be either split by region, industry, or region/industry-agnostic. 

At the end of the day, having an internship is a valuable opportunity. We hope these tips will enhance your internship experience! Have any additional advice? Submit a comment below to share to our student readers. 

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