The movie The Internship, which I found very funny and offering very good messages, has brought about a number of people offering insight into internships and how to benefit from them, mostly from the firm's side.
Here are two interesting articles: from Harvard's Business Review, what the movie gets right about internships, and from LinkedIn, how a firm should handle interns (#4 is the weakest for me).
For students, I have always offered the following advice about internships:
- Learn. Education is about learning and there are many ways to learn. You are embarking on one of those different opportunities and your most important task is to learn from it. Acquire both internal and external knowledge from this experience.
- Do an outstanding job. Think of an internship as a dress rehearsal and you can win the part if you perform well.
- Network. This is a time to meet people and build a network of contacts and friends (not necessarily in that order) for future reference. Most jobs are obtained through networks.
- Develop a reputation as someone who is interested in the company, not the job. The department where you are interning may not have any openings after you graduate, but if you have a great reputation and have shown you can create value for the firm, they may find you a job elsewhere within the organization. Take an interest in all areas of the firm and speak to people in other departments, finding out what they do.
- Don't gossip and stay out of office politics. You are not there to take sides and engaging in this kind of dysfunctional activity. Doing so will tank your prospect of ever getting hired. Believe it or not, this happens all too often.
- Have fun! This doesn't mean goofing off, but that if you treat your job as a chore, something that bores you and you must endure it for the next eight weeks, it will come across that you are really not interested. Approach it as a valuable learning experience from which you can derive not only knowledge, but also fun. It goes by quicker.
