5 Tips to Maximize Your Internship
Melissa Woodson,
BetterGrads guest contributor
(photo by Claudia Whitsitt)
When I took my first internship in publishing, I hoped to gain on-the-job training and valuable experience to put on my resume. A job offer was in the back of my mind.
Even though I wanted to improve my prospects of employment in the future, the opportunity to gain skills was my main motivation.
But for me (and all interns), these benefits are not a given; you only get as much out of an internship as you put in. To that end, here are five tips for how to maximize an internship you might pursue.
- Learn your industry.
- Clarify duties, responsibilities and expectations.
- Set personal goals, and keep yourself busy.
- Use social media to your advantage.
- Always go the extra mile.
As a novice, the burden is on you to educate yourself in your field.
As a working writer, I read everything from trade magazines to websites and blogs relating to issues about newspapers, publishers, the literary community, etc. (everything related to my field). It makes me more confident in my work to know that I’m informed. Know who the important movers and shakers are in your field.
This applies to your workplace as well: Who runs your company? What do they do? Where do you fit into the overall scheme of things? The first job of an intern is to understand.
One of the most common internship stereotypes is that all you will do is complete menial tasks.
For a publishing internship, I learned how to format articles for printing, but I also had to bring coffee and take notes during editorial meetings. While this is true of some internships, and nearly all of them require some amount of grunt work, a proper internship should also involve knowledge and training that will help you become an expert in your field. Whenever I felt as though I might be doing something “beneath me,” I just reminded myself that everyone has to pay their dues, and that paying mine would pay off! And it did.
Develop a set of goals, macro and micro, to pursue while interning.
If your end goal is to get a job out of the internship, devise smaller goals along the way that will facilitate that. Keeping busy is also important. Whenever I finished a project ahead of time at my publishing internship, the first thing I did was ask my supervisor if there was more to be done. Doing this helped me feel that I was taking advantage of every opportunity available to me.
Some of the best learning came from opportunities I sought out, not just those assigned to me.
Social media is playing an increasingly important role in the workplace.
This was how I got my internship in the first place (through an open call on Twitter). One of my main tasks during my internship was to create and maintain a blog for the publisher that hired me.
Social media responsibilities are also commonly handed off to the younger office members, so proving your worth here may be an inroad to a permanent position. Taking on the blog really gave me a sense of ownership over my work, and it was great to be able to showcase my skills in such a public-facing way.
A willingness to do whatever is required of you, no matter how minuscule or seemingly mundane, will endear you to your employers.
Among a group of interns, I was selected for an editorial position precisely because I had volunteered extra time by organizing a fundraiser for the publisher. I got the editorial position because I seldom said “no” when professional obligations were asked of me.
Remember: You never know what opportunities might come your way when you say “yes.”
Melissa Woodson
St. Louis, MO
Melissa Woodson is the community manager for @WashULaw, an LLM in US Law at Washington University in St. Louis. In her spare time, she enjoys running, cooking and making half-baked attempts at training her dog.
