Your new supervisor briskly walks you to a cubicle. “Ok, this is your desk!” he says, rushing off to his next meeting.
Too often, many internships for college students are unstructured, and interns find themselves with nothing more to do besides grabbing coffee and copying papers, but instead of sitting at your desk, chatting with the other interns about how you have nothing to do—or worse, letting your Twitter fingers fly with #boredatwork hashtags, you can make yourself useful. Here’s how.
Learn as much as you can about the employees.
The point of an internship isn’t just for you to slap another bullet point onto your resume: It’s supposed to help you learn. Whether you’re developing valuable career skills or deciding if this is the right career path for you, you can only get the most out of your internship if you’re learning new things from professionals in the field.
Look up a few of the employees (you can start with your department), whether on the About Us page or on their LinkedIn profiles to find out as much as you can about their roles and responsibilities. Send a few emails requesting one-on-ones and say that you’re interested in their work and you’d love to have a 15-minute coffee chat to hear more about their role. Make sure you prepare a few questions in advance so that you gain as much information as you can about how they contribute to the company.
Look for things that are slipping through the cracks.
Let’s say you’re interning for an online pop culture magazine and you notice that Kanye has been ranting about Taylor Swift (again), and no one has written a post for social. Let your direct manager know that you’ve noticed that the company is missing a voice on a trending top, and email him or her with a few sources—you can even write the article yourself. Another example is that you’re interning at a tech company and you notice there’s a bug that’s interfering with user registration. Email your supervisor to alert him or her of the issue—bonus points if you have a few suggestions for improving the user flow altogether.
Stepping up when things are slipping through the cracks not only makes the business stronger but also shows that you’re the type of person who catches issues and steps up to solve problems. It’s a great way to show your value early on as an intern.
Ask people how you can help.
At the end of each day of your internship, you should ask yourself: Did I provide value to someone today? Whether you’re asking your boss if he or she needs anything from you or checking in with your co-workers to see if they could use your support, you should always find a way to make people’s jobs easier. This will not only ensure that every single person you worked with remembers your name at the end of your internship, but it will also pay off as you start looking for an entry-level job. The interns who truly made an impact will be the first pick when the time comes to extend an offer.
Use the time to learn new skills.
Use the time to learn new skills that you’ve always wanted to learn—skills that will benefit your future. Whether you’re asking the Design team for tips using Photoshop or asking the Marketing team how they analyze Google Analytics.
You can then volunteer to help on projects where you can practice your newfound skills, but be extra diligent on your regular responsibilities, since your hiring manager will rate your performance on these tasks first.
No matter what, don’t blame an unsuccessful internship on the fact that you weren’t given enough to do. You will be expected to accomplish a lot if you want to receive a great recommendation letter or even a full-time offer after your internship is over, so make your impact by being consistently proactive throughout the internship program.
Stay in touch after the internship ends.
Once your internship is over, keeping in touch with your boss and your colleagues is a great way of staying on their radar if a new position opens up. This can be as simple as sending an email every few months to let them know what you’ve been up to and to ask how things at the company are going.
Staying connected with your former employers is also a great way to grow your professional network and will likely make it easier to get references when you need them, so don’t be afraid to reach out. You never know where it might lead!
