6 Tips for an awesome internship
Having a good mentor is a great way to start your career. They can save you time, teach you tips and tricks and introduce you to connections that will help you throughout your working life. Below is an extract from a piece written by Ryan Holiday, which offers some excellent tips for navigating the start of an internship.
“It’s not about kissing ass. It’s not about making someone look good. It’s about providing the support so that others can be good. The better wording for the advice is this: Find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself.”
Come up with ideas to hand over to your boss.
Find people, thinkers, up-and-comers to introduce them to each other.
Find what nobody else wants to do and do it.
Find inefficiencies and waste and redundancies.
Identify leaks and patches to free up resources for new areas.
Produce more than everyone else and give your ideas away.
If you follow these tips, you will learn so much from the work that you'll be able to easily find your next opportunity or the company will offer to keep you on. A final tip is to: keep a journal of everything you learn throughout the work experience. This will be useful when explaining what you did to prospective employers.
