Getting Your Foot in the Door: The Value of Internships

The best way that you can prove yourself to a potential employer is to portray poise, professionalism, smarts, and to have a great deal of experience under your belt. The more experience you have, the better. Therefore, it is a great idea to take on a few internships while you are in school.

Not only will internships help to beef up the experience section of our resume, but they will also help you to make great contacts. Be sure to get the card or contact information of everyone that you work with before your internship is over. Also, before leaving your internship, be sure to ask your supervisors if you may use them as professional references. If you had a very good working relationship, you may even want to ask them to write you letters of recommendation.

The Proper Use of an Internship

In addition to networking and gaining references, internships will also teach you a great deal about your prospective career industry. Be sure to ask questions of your supervisors to learn more about their work. Also, whenever you are working on a project, be sure to learn everything that you can about that project. It may make good sense to take notes about the work that you do during your internships. It will be valuable to speak about your work as an intern when you are applying for jobs. If your works as an intern results in a finished product, then be sure to take information on that product into interviews.

If you have a positive experience as an intern and find that the company is hiring entry-level employees, be sure to apply. You will have the great advantage of already knowing people within the company as well as company protocol and procedures. Be sure to ask your supervisor to write a letter of recommendation to the human resources department.

Getting an Internship Later in Your Career

If you have decided that you really want to change your career path, you may want to start this process with an internship. A very good friend of mine decided that she wanted to leave her job in politics and go into magazine publishing. She had a degree from an Ivy League school and a great resume. Her experience, however, was not going to get her a job in publishing. My friend took a few months off of work, got an internship at a popular food magazine and started networking. By the time her internship was over, the magazine was so impressed with her work as an intern that she was hired as a full-time staff person.

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