All summer long, you tried to turn your negative internship around, but whether you dealt with one disaster after the next, you struggled to appease a horrible boss or the internship just wasn’t a good fit for your personality or career goals, the internship you’d dreamed of for so long was not what you thought it would be. A bad internship experience can happen to the best of us, but figuring out what to say about said internship to acquaintances, friends and potential employers can be tricky. Check out HC’s tips for how to talk about an internship that you hated (without lying or bashing the company!).
Be professional, yet honest
After a long, frustrating internship, it can be tempting to blow off some steam by complaining about your less-than-stellar experience. However, before you start ranting about how much you hated your supervisor or the demeaning work, think about how that negativity will reflect on you. Just like you don’t want to be that girl who’s always criticizing other people, you don’t want to be perceived as the girl with a whiny attitude.
“It’s important to always focus on professionalism,” says Alicia Rodriguez, director of employer relations at the University of Miami’s career center. “Never say negative things about a company that you worked for, a department, a professor, etc.”
This is especially important to keep in mind when it comes to talking about your internship with a potential employer. As disappointed as you might have been with your past employer, bringing up those issues in an interview could be the thing that stands in the way of you and your dream job offer.
“Most workplaces want to avoid negative people and behaviors, so if you do talk negatively about a past internship, it says a lot,” Rodriguez says. “Even if it was a negative experience because of the employer, you don’t want to say this, or you’ll come off looking bad. Instead, you could say something like, ‘It just wasn’t a good fit based on my expectations.’”
Since it’s likely a given that an interviewer is going to ask about your past work experience or even ask you point-blank why you didn’t like the internship, you need to be prepared to talk about why the internship was less than ideal, according to Emily Miethner, founder and CEO of FindSpark and MCG Social.
“Always be very professional, and don’t be nervous talking about it,” Miethner says. “Practice what you want to say aloud or do a mock interview with a friend so that you can get comfortable talking about the experience.”
Talking about a bad internship often requires you to walk a line between professionalism and honesty. Before blaming the negative internship experience on your supervisor or the company, it’s important to take a healthy dose of self-reflection.
“When thinking about a bad experience, [ask yourself], did you do everything that you could to turn it around?” Rodrigues says. “Did you create opportunities to step up and ask for help?”
However, if the reasons for the internship being bad were out of your control, one great way to approach talking about the experience in an interview is to frame it in a way that conveys your assets as an employee. Instead of talking about what the company didn’t do for you, focus on what you wanted to bring to the company, but maybe didn’t get the opportunity to accomplish. “For example, you could say that you’re the type of person who is able to handle real work and that you weren’t as involved as you wanted to be,” Miethner suggests.
You could also talk about how the internship didn’t give you the opportunity to utilize your creativity, innovative ideas, etc., or say that as a result of the internship, you realized that your talents are better suited to a different line of work.
Focus on the positives
It may be hard to believe when you’re still suffering through a brain-numbing internship, but even the most mundane summer gig has its positives, which is important to remember when talking about what you got out of the experience.
“The great thing about your career is that you get to present it in the best way that tells your story,” Miethner says.
So while you may have had to settle for your second- (or third-) choice internship or found yourself trying to please an irrational boss, take a step back and think about what the experience taught you as a whole.
As Miethner explains, every negative situation has a positive flip side. Instead of talking about how the position was stressful, you could say that you learned how to work in a high-pressure environment. If it turns out that you hated the line of work, you could say that you gained a better understanding of what career path you want to take. Or, instead of talking about your experience with catty interns or a demanding boss, you could say that you learned to work with different types of personalities.
Talk about what you learned
Above all else, a negative internship experience is an opportunity to gain some insight into what you want (and don’t want) out of a future career.
“There are things to be learned from both good and bad internships,” Miethner says. “Part of the learning experience is to be able to be self-aware. Use the experience as a stepping stone and to better know what type of job environment you want (e.g., respectful coworkers, more responsibility, more involvement, etc.).”
As you career-savvy collegiettes know, one of the essentials to nailing a job or internship interview is being able to articulate why you want to work for that specific company. In this way, your bad internship experience can actually work for you!
“You can use your past position to talk about why you’re interviewing at this company, because you know it has what you’re looking for,” Miethner says.
When talking about what you learned from the internship, Suzanne Dagger, director of the Career Center at Hofstra University, suggests using phrases like:
- “I observed/worked in this setting on a daily basis, and although it was a good environment, I realized it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I am hoping to work as a ____ where I can contribute ____.”
- “I am really skilled in _____, and, unfortunately, my internship experience did not provide me with opportunities to use this skill.”
- “My internship at _____ exposed me to the _____ industry. It allowed me to determine what I want and don’t want in a future employment setting.”
By framing your past experience in this way, you can show potential employers exactly what you learned as a result of your internship and how you’re using that knowledge to focus your career path in the right direction.
In the end, every internship (good or bad) is what you make of it. Instead of bringing up the negative aspects of the job, which is never a good idea, stay positive and professional, focus on what you learned and remember that it’s all about perspective!