Now that your spring/summer co-op or summer internship is over, you may want to pack up your dress pants and forget all about the professional world, but there are a few important things you should be doing right now to make sure you get the most value out of your internship experience.
1. Update Your Résumé
Sounds like common sense, right? We all know that it’s smart to keep our résumés updated, but in reality we often forget this detail until we actually start looking for a job. If you haven’t already added your summer internship to your résumé, do it now while the experience is still fresh in your mind. Six months from now when you’re applying for your dream job, you may forget some of the important details, like the programs you used or the exciting projects you worked on. Make this a top priority now and you will have a polished and professional résumé when you are ready to start your job search. Trust me, you don’t want to miss opportunities because you were scrambling to meet application deadlines while cramming for finals!
2. Keep in Touch
At this point in your career, it’s important to build a network of people who care about your success and want to help you reach your goals. An internship is one of the best ways for college students to start building this network, but it is essential to maintain those professional relationships after your last day on the job. Now is a great time to connect with your coworkers on LinkedIn so you can keep in touch while you’re in classes. Check in periodically, share articles you think they’ll find interesting, maybe send a few quick updates about how your classes are going. If you stay in touch, those new connections could grow into a career-long professional relationships!
Recently, I was looking for an internship and reached out to my last supervisor to see if she had any positions available. Although she was very friendly and receptive to my email, I felt a bit rude because this was the first time I contacted her since my internship over a year ago! You don’t want your connections to think that you only reach out when you need something from them! Stay well-connected and your network will be much more likely to help you in the future or think of you when positions become available.
3. Reflect on Your Experience
Although it may not seem like a priority right now, it’s very important to think (I mean really think) about your internship experience. What new skills did you develop? What were the best aspects of this position? What were your greatest challenges? The goal here is to have a clear explanation of what you learned, how this position is relevant to your career goals, and why this experience qualifies you for other positions. Right now – while the experience is fresh in your mind and you aren’t preoccupied with fall term – is the best time to figure all that out. When you apply for full-time jobs after graduation, your internship experience will set you apart from other recent graduates, but a hiring manager will only appreciate the value of your experience if you can explain it to them.
Maybe your internship experience was less than perfect? I am a firm believer that all internships – the fulfilling and the frustrating – are valuable learning experiences. If you had a difficult coworker who made every day a challenge, you probably learned something about conflict resolution. If you were overloaded with mundane work, maybe your daily drudgery improved your time management skills. By finding the silver lining to this position now, you will be prepared when an interviewer asks what you learned. At the very least, if there is nothing positive to say, you gained some perspective about what types of work environments you should avoid, which could help in your future job search.
Tip: Reflecting on your experience is much easier if you keep a journal throughout your internship, something we definitely recommend!
4. Thank the mentors who helped you along the way
Did you have an exceptional manager who went out of their way to make sure you had a positive internship experience? Or maybe you had coworkers who took your professional development very seriously and shared their knowledge every chance they had? The day after you leave, send a quick email to those helpful individuals to express your appreciation. A week later, send an actual paper thank you note to those you felt most connected with. This is a small gesture that will leave your coworkers with a lasting positive impression. Down the road, when someone considering you for a job calls them for a professional reference, their first reaction will be “I remember her, she was great!
Do you have any other advice for how to leave an internship on the right foot? Leave your advice in the comments!