5 Ways To Leverage Your Internship

5 Ways To Leverage Your Internship pexels.com You’ve heard the phrases over and over during your college years: internship. The coveted internship seems to be the gateway into a fruitful career regardless of what you want to do. Say you scored an awesome internship and now you’re out applying for some new jobs in the all-too-competitive job market today. How do you turn that glorious internship you did into something that will both enhance and improve you as an applicant? Well, this part isn’t as hard as the rest of the job application may be. Here are five ways to leverage your internship experience: 1. Experience Firstly, the fact that you have any internship experience whatsoever is a positive in any job market. The majority of this article will focus on internships within a related field to the previous internship, but any extra work you’ve done can be utilized as a skill. Every internship experience provides valuable lessons in the professional workplace that cannot be taught everywhere else. Be sure to mention that you are no stranger to this environment or a very similar one. Your experience alone makes you more qualified than anyone without an internship. You know how to write emails, answer calls, use various machines, and perform at a high professional standard. These skills are irreplaceable in the job market and are almost uniquely gained by related job or intern experience. 2. Diversity The beauty of an internship, or perhaps your personal struggle, is that you are not pushed into one single job. Instead, you’re more likely to be thrown into every job. During an internship, you aren’t likely to be pigeonholed whatsoever. You’ll gain experience in all sorts of departments and with all different types of people. This is perfect for applying for jobs because you aren’t going to be missing any crucial experience, you’ve got it all. An internship has prepared you well to take on any task, whether it be in your comfort zone or not. Internships allow you to confront a variety of problems with confidence and ease. 3. Dedication Someone who has taken an internship has also taken time to really evaluate what is important in their life. The fact of the matter is, any former intern takes their career seriously enough to sacrifice their time for their passion. An internship, especially an unpaid one, not only demonstrates a great interest in the field, but an executed one as well. Having an internship on your resume is the difference between saying you are serious about your career and actually taking the action to advance it. You’re willing to put up with the not so glamorous, nitty gritty jobs that an intern does just to soak in the atmosphere of your ideal workplace. This makes for an applicant that can talk the talk and walk the walk. 4. Connections Because you already have experience in the field, you also have connections in the field. You aren’t a complete new kid on the block who knows nobody and has no idea what’s going on. It is also possible that the past connections you made from your former internship could translate over to positive relationships in your new professional job. You also have a good feel for how the people within this field work and act. Are they very strict and professional or more laid back? If you already have an idea of how the workplace functions, even in a vague sense, you’ll know the proper etiquette going in and won’t make a complete fool of yourself. Also, you won’t have to learn the ropes the hard way. 5. First-Hand Training Internship is also crucial to your job hunt because it cuts out a lot of training that can cut into you and your boss’s time. When you have experience in the field, this also means you have at least a general knowledge of the software and equipment that goes with it. You may be handy with the scanner or a wiz with Excel and this certainly isn’t going to turn off your future employers. Your internship has likely taught you so many valuable skills that your new job will sigh in relief at not having to train another person in how to make a spreadsheet. Hopefully you’ve now realized all the wonderful gifts your former internship has given you (even if it wasn’t a job). Often, it’s only in retrospect that you truly notice the enormity of the things you learned while interning. You’ve learned valuable skills to improve your coworker relations, system operations, and lots of other things that simply can’t be taught without some great experience. An internship isn’t just something to boost up your resume, but something that probably greatly improved your life as a worker. You may be closer to scoring your dream job than you thought. You may want to thank your former self.