How to End Your Internship on a Positive Note

How to End Your Internship on a Positive NoteHow to End Your Internship on a Positive NoteEnding an internship or summer job on a positive note is something all interns should keep in mind. Along with gaining relevant experience to include on your resume, developing and maintaining professional connections is what makes internships such a valuable experience for students. Why You Should End Your Internship on a Positive Note Gain valuable knowledge, skills, and experience in a career field of choice.Make valuable networking connections with professionals in the field.Add Relevant Experience to your resume. Many students find themselves so busy at the end of their internship that they immediately forget about their summer internship or job and the valuable contacts they made along the way. Understanding the value of networking often takes time and even though professionals know its importance, students with little experience may not yet realize its value. Capitalizing on your summ er internship or job requires an understanding of how professional contacts can be helpful in your future job search. Leaving an internship or summer job on a positive note will provide teamberaters and co-workers with fond memories to remember you by. Thank All of the People Who Helped Along the Way Being grateful for the time and expertise that your supervisor and colleagues provided throughout your summer internship will go a long way towards making a memorable positive impression for them to remember. Providing specific examples of what you learned during your internship and how valuable you felt the experience was towards helping you to accomplish your future career goals will leave them feeling appreciated and most willing to assist you in the future. Its surprising how much people want to help but if they dont know that you actually want help they may be hesitant in proving feedback and/or leads about future internship or job opportunities. By sharing your future aspirati ons and career goals, people will be more willing to keep you in mind and contact you should they hear of any internships or jobs that may be right up your ally. Its important to send thank you notes to your immediate supervisor and any others who helped you along the way. Although email thank yous are often sufficient, many employers say that they do appreciate a nice hand-written thank you note where students take the extra time. Share Your Future Career Plans With Supervisors and Employees By sharing your plans with your supervisor and co-workers you will be setting the stage for maintaining valuable future connections. Since networking is the 1 job search strategy, you cant have too many people in your network. By establishing and maintaining these important connections you will be on the road to using your internship success towards finding a future job. Ask Your Manager for Feedback About Your Performance This can be a tough one if you feel that your internship didnt go as well as planned, but the feedback can be enormously helpful in providing the information needed to improve on your performance. If the internship or job experience was positive it will be much easier to ask the question but you may not learn as much in the process. Update Your Resume While the Experience Is Fresh in Your Mind Updating your resume immediately will help you to fully describe your summer experience and what you learned. You may ask your supervisor to help you since they may be able to include professional jargon and help you to better describe the experience so other employers will better understand what role you played during your internship or summer job. Reflect on Your Summer Experience Reflecting on a summer internship or job while its still fresh in your mind will provide you with a more detailed, accurate assessment of what it is that you liked and disliked about your summer experience. By asking yourself these questions, you will identify key poin ts that can be very helpful in the decision-making process when seeking a full-time job. How do you feel you would fit into this type of work environment?Can you actually see yourself doing this job on a daily basis?What was most positive about the experience?What concerns do you have about working in a similar job?Are you willing to work the number of hours it takes to be successful in the field?Was the work you did enjoyable or did you see other employees in the organization that did work that was more interesting to you? Add Your Summer Experience to Your Linkedin Profile Updating your LinkedIn Profile and connecting with other employees of the company is a great way to begin the networking process. Asking for recommendations is also a great way to utilize LinkedIn to your advantage. Keeping your LinkedIn Profile updated will ensure that you are using social media in the most effective way once you are actively engaged in the job search process .