We recently ended our internships at our company and made offers to a select few who we wanted to keep. I would like to share the experience of one of our interns who didn’t receive an offer. I hope other college graduates can benefit from some of the mistakes he made. I would like to start by saying that he will make a great employee, but the fit just wasn’t right for our department.
First, forget your grades. You need to have good grades to get a decent internship. After that, no one really cares about your GPA—everybody in my department was an “A” student. In fact, the intern we didn’t hire obtained a perfect math score on his SAT. Being book smart is one thing, but there are plenty of people out there who are academically smart. I like to believe that there’s always someone smarter out there; the way to set yourself apart is to know what else you bring to the table.
Forget hard work. Yeah, you need to work a minimum amount and I wouldn’t leave early by any means; however, you don’t need to stay at work till midnight everyday. Some jobs might require it, but most of the ones I’ve worked at definitely don’t require 16-hour days. Put in the requisite hours in by mimicking others in your department. You really don’t need to go above and beyond what others are doing. The intern we didn’t hire thought that sitting at his desk for longer hours meant that he was getting more done. In actuality, we had no idea why he sat at his desk for so long.
Develop your social skills. Too many nerds and dorks walk into our department as interns. An easy way to set yourself apart is to have social skills. Too many young people are underdeveloped in this area. I’m not talking about party skills, I’m talking about the ability to talk and network with people to get things done. Know how to quickly assess a social situation in the workplace and know what your role is in it. The aforementioned intern severely lacked in this area. At a conference with other interns in the company, he commented that he wished there were more business-related activities instead of social activities. He missed the entire point of the conference, which was to network with his peers in the company.
Have some self-confidence, but don’t think you know it all—cause you don’t. Surviving in the workplace isn’t necessarily about generating new ideas. Sometimes it’s about executing tried and true processes and procedures. Your best skill is listening. Along with confidence, you should also be positive. We know you’ll get disillusioned eventually, but if you come in that way we know you’ll never last. The intern that was let go always seemed to have something negative to say, despite telling everyone how much he wanted to receive an offer from the company. He wanted a job, but no one really liked working with him.
Don’t sweat the small stuff so much. Your role will probably be pretty minor in the beginning. We’re just assessing you in general. If you’re stressed out doing these minor tasks, we know you won’t be able to handle the responsibility of larger tasks. Just do what you’re supposed to do and you’ll be fine. If we see that you’re stressed, it will only hurt your cause. Our intern seemed stressed out about everything. Keep your cool.
Accept your role doing whatever mundane task is assigned to you. Boredom and monotony will probably be part of your job. We know it’s simple, boring work, that’s why we gave it to you. We’re looking at how you handle it. If you’re not smiling, networking, and doing a good job, we’re not going to make you an offer. Despite what your momma told you, you’re not the greatest person in the world and you’re probably not going to become the CEO of the company. We want to see if you can grind. This is a very important skill to surviving in the workplace. It won’t always be like this, but it probably will be in the beginning. Lose the sense of entitlement. It may work out for you eventually, but don’t come in expecting to be an executive.
2:55 pm
Awesome! I think you and me are alike. I work in the I.T. industry, and I am not a technical person. I do not have a degree, I am not a geek, I have never seen Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, or any of the other ‘geek’ movies out there. To the contrary, I am the one who always makes fun of those people. In school, I was a jock and class clown, which is quite the opposite of about 99% of the IT crowd. I earned an athletic scholarship (OK, it was baseball, but it is somewhat athletic) to a small school. I quit school to save the university the time and expense of kicking me out. The school work kept interfering with parties, beer, and the chicks.
I then joined the Air Force because my boss and I got into an argument, and I joined because he said I didn’t have the discipline to go in the military. After 4 years of Air Force life, I went to work for the National Weather Service as a meteorologist, but once again, they wanted me to get a degree if I wanted to go any further then I was. I then went into business for myself, I bought a sporting goods store. That was cool, then I realized that you have to work weekends and holidays! What?
I then got into IT because a friend of mine was configuring something called ATM’s, and he made a lot of money doing it. I thought it was the cash machines, and he was taking some of the money. He got me some info on what he does, and I thought I would give it a shot. I went back to school, or a technical school, and earned a Microsoft certification. Wooooo!!!! Then someone(sucker)offered me a job in the IT field. Here I am 10 years later still in the IT field.
I still don’t consider myself to be all that technical, but I can read a manual. I have had plenty of practice with the ’social networking’ aspect of the corporate world, and I can still make people laugh. I do believe my wit has kept my neck off the chopping block several times as I have survived numerous lay-offs. Folks with 10 times the knowledge have been let go, and I still remain. I totally agree with what you are saying. One more thing you might want to add is if you walk around with a clip board with papers on it, and have a real worried look on your face, no one will question what you are doing. Even talking out loud to yourself about some ‘work related’ issue will earn you the title of ‘a real hard worker’.
Well, it has been fun reading your blog, now I need to get back to work (ha ha ha).