Mastering Your Summer Internship

Summer internships are special. While interning during the school year can offer a phenomenal experience, a summer internship is typically full-time, allowing you to put your full focus on developing professional skills and impressing your boss and peers. It can also help you line up a full-time job after you graduate. Many summer internships are also part of an internship program that can involve a number of other students as well as unique mentorship events like brown-bag lunches, and fun activities like company baseball games.

To make the most of your summer internship you should come into it with goals and have a strategy to make sure you succeed. Goals can be anything from getting way better at a certain professional skill like sales, or front-end engineering; or, a goal can be to network and meet as many other people as you can. To help you get the most out of your summer position, we talked to hundreds of students to learn more about what they wished they knew before their first internship and made a summer internship blog series covering key topics and activities you should study and complete. Our list is below:

Week by week advice to make the most of your summer internship: 

Pre-Internship:
Setting Summer Internship Goals

Week 1:
10 Tips on Setting Goals with Your Manager

Week 2:
How to Accelerate Your Learning Curve

Week 3:
Get Productive and Learn to Manage Your Workload

Week 4:
Learn to Network With Peers and Co-Workers Early

Remember the 10 Must Dos of Networking

Explore these 7 Online Resources Perfect for Networking

Learn to spark more thrilling conversations

Week 5:
Build Your Personal Project

Week 6:
Check Yourself and Reorganize Your Space

Week 7:
Look Ahead to Maximize Your Impact

Week 8:
Learn How to Land Your First Job

Week 9:
3 Steps for Asking for a Letter of Recommendation

Week 10:
5 Things You MUST Do Before Leaving Your Summer Internship

Advanced Tips for Writing Memorable Thank You Letters

What’s Next?

Once you’ve knocked your summer internship out of the park, you’ll be on the hunt for another internship or an entry-level job. If you’re moving on to entry-level jobs, here are a few suggestions for starting your search.
If you’re think you’ll be looking at jobs outside of your major focus, we’ve got a few tips for you here.

Next, get more career tips for internships and entry-level jobs such as What is an Internship? and find answers to common interview questions such as What’s Your Dream Job?