By Diana Perera
Processed (published) on sept 21, 2022 – made live December 12, 2022
If you are a person who just finished your studies and wonder what to do next you may find this article useful. Here are few tips you can make the best out of your internship.
1. Know the purpose of your internship
Make your internship the first step to decide on what field should you choose as your career. Choosing a career path could be a pressing question to some. There are a lot of opportunities out there in the job market which are often confusing and frightful to choose. While most of the individuals compete to that one trainee position in the bank or at the best accounting firm, you might be missing lots of other fascinating opportunities out there. There are various fields such as manufacturing, Compliance, Quality Assurance that are not common but have tremendous growth opportunities.
2. Understand your Intern style
There are few categories of potential interns who enter the job market. See to which category you belong and what you can do best to select the ideal career path.
I’m an all-rounder– These are the ones who have big dreams and need to prove that they’re versatile on many areas. Individuals in this category usually are smart and have big dreams. But they’re often not 100% clear on what exactly they need. Interns fall under this category certainly need to achieve a lot and standout therefore they invest a lot in following multiple courses covering different areas while doing the internship. We often come across such candidates who enter the job market having done dozens of courses covering Marketing, HR, Accounting, Law and reading for an MBA too where MBA is not even an entry level qualification. Their energy is more like wasted potential. This often makes them feel exhausted and disappointed fast, as their expected ROI is lesser during an internship.
Having the urge to learn and gain knowledge is important but loosing yourself over it isn’t that wise. It is important to get considerable returns on your investments in education. Having this energy and efforts directed in one guided direction and gain much more successful returns than being all over the place. It is perfectly alright to follow multiple courses if they really help one to get to his or her dreams and visions. But instead if you are following all those to impress an employer you better rethink what you are doing. Because this can confuse you on getting into the ideal career path and employers may find it difficult to place you at an internship and will cause you loosing many opportunities because simply you are overqualified.
Well, they hired me – These are the potential candidates who are free- spirited, desperate for money or seeking an opportunity as required by an educational institutes. The desperation for money isn’t negative it could be because of the financial difficulties they might be facing. Sometimes it is nice to let the life take you to where you destined to be, but it is always smarter to have an idea where life will take you or more importantly challenge life to take your to where you want to be. No matter how free spirited one is, they will always have dreams and visions of what we want and what kind of life we would like to have. So we can manifest our studies towards that.
This isn’t what I want- You know your passion but you are not in the path due to various reasons. So the entire time you will be worrying and trying to make your way to what you need, this sometimes won’t allow you to do justice for where you are at the moment. In any starting job or an internship you are expected to work hard and prove your self-worth. Thiscan be disturbed if you are distracted at this point. It is always better to make your way but don’t forget where you are and give your best self for what you do.
3. Know the basics- Many organisations fail due to the lack of understanding over the basics. Internships provide ample time to get over the basics and apply them in the real work scenarios. Usually internships starts with the fresh knowledge of what a person had just learned at their undergrad or grad studies. This is the ideal place to see if those theories really work. Make sure that you are thorough with the knowledge of the basic business principles or practices which paves a strong foundation for a greater future.
4. It is the starting point of networking – To be a successful business personnel networks is the key. In the business context the number of people who knows you matters more than the number of people you know. And positive business relationships always do come in handy. Having a larger network will help you out in converting your potential into a source of income.
5. Be humble & make mistakes – yeah, you heard it right. Many of us think that we shouldn’t make mistakes. And we fear making mistakes. Yes we shouldn’t make mistakes on purpose but what if they happen? We all learn through our mistakes. And especially during an internship, we might make a lot of mistakes. So it’s okay, let’s be humble and correct ourselves.
Internships are fountains of opportunities. And being open for it and getting the best out of it can help you to shine with humility and start building your own legacy.
