Walking into the office of your internship on the first day will inevitably be exciting, yet nerve-wracking. The office—full of busy professionals hustling around, drinking their coffee and cracking jokes—will feel nothing else but intimidating. Internships are a time for learning, but when your internship advisor asks you to pitch an evergreen story or log in into the CMS, you’re going to want to know what she’s talking about. There is going to be a lot you’ll learn throughout your first couple of days, and you don’t want to get behind because of a couple of silly words. Fortunately, you can start preparing now, collegiettes™, because Her Campus has compiled a list of terms from industries ranging from fashion to finance, to help you impress your co-workers and boss the minute you walk through those doors. Consider this your internship dictionary.
But before we break it down by industry, here are a few business-y words that apply to almost any profession.
Annual Report: A formal presentation of a company’s accounts in the past year. These are all completed accounts and this presentation serves as a yearly review of the company’s status.
Quarterly Business Review (spoken as “Q-B-R”): A meeting that occurs every four months where business performance is discussed.
Invoice: A fancy word for a receipt of a company’s service.
Strategic Account Plans: A defined roadmap of a sales strategy that is specifically designed for each customer.
Journalism
In a newsroom, editors and reporters are rarely going to have time to fully focus on you—not that they don’t want to. They’ll just be busy, ferociously typing away, writing stories and breaking news. The newsroom is a very hectic environment and a good intern must hit the ground running, and this means talking the journalism talk.
Lead: The first few sentences of a news story. This is used to hook the reader’s attention, luring them in to want to read more.
Evergreen: A story idea that can be used at any time of the year; it’s always relevant. It is not specific to a certain event or trend.
Pitch: The way in which a reporter/writer shares a story idea with an editor. Usually this will happen at a daily meeting in the newsroom when reporters will pitch stories to the higher editor.
Copy: Copy refers to the content, or physical being of the story, rather than duplicating it. For example, a writer’s first edited version of an article would be referred to as the first copy.
Man-on-the-street: To get a man-on-the-street means interviewing random strangers. Usually you’ll be asked to physically go stand on a street corner and ask strangers what they think about a certain event to add public opinion to the story.
Clips: Published stories you wrote that are often requested by potential employers. These are what you want to keep tabs of after your internship!
Search Engine Optimization (spoken as “S-E-O”): Describes a company’s website page ranking on search engines such as Google. News organizations want their stories to appear first when a reader Googles a story they are looking for information about.
Fashion
Sure, Andy ended up being a good assistant to major fashion editor Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, but you wouldn’t want to start off like she did. Impress your couture-loving co-workers by knowing these mostly French-inspired words.
Les mots: Haute Couture (noun /??t ko?o?to?or/ ): The designing and making of high-quality, high-fashion clothes. This usually refers to the work done by the leading fashion houses.
Croquis: French term to describes the rough sketch of a live model in the garments.
Grommet: A metal ring used to reinforce an eyelet.
Mood board: A poster board that consists of images, text and samples, to formally present a designer’s image and ideas.
Collection: Clothing/accessories offered during a particular season.
