The End of Your Summer Internship Marks the Beginning of a Relationship

The days are getting shorter and the smell of sweet summer is slowly funneling down the wire. While the days of your summer internship may be in the single digits, the work for your internship should not.

The end of your internship marks the beginning of a relationship. 

Whether or not you plan to pursue a full-time position with your company, maintaining a conversation and relationship with collegues is vital for your career advancement. Networking is essential to your career, and the relationships you form during the summer can be the start to creating a web of contacts. 

Here are some actions you can take after finishing your internship:

1. Write thank you notes. No, not thank you e-mails. Actual letters. Write about something that you learned, about a project you and that associate worked on together, about their mentorship. Be genuine.
2. Find your verbs. Write down everything you did. For your personal use, write down everything you worked on. Look at your summer calendar and write down what you accomplished each week. Use action verbs to describe everything you accomplished. The more verbs you use, the more accurately you can portray your duties and projects on a resume or during an interview.
3. Rewrite your resume. Now. Don’t wait until you apply to your next job to update your resume. Use those verbs in #3 and add your internship to your resume ASAP. Also, ask your employer if he or she would mind being a future reference.
4. Send update e-mails. Once you are back at school or pursuing other interests, send update e-mails. Tell your summer colleagues what you have been doing and ask what is happening around the office. I have kept in contact with co-workers from my last internship and have developed great personal and professional relationships- simply through e-mails and phone calls.

Tomorrow is the last day of my summer internship. I have had such a positive experience and I am sad to leave a thriving company with enthusiastic mentors, but I know through today’s digital world advice is only an e-mail away.

What additional guidance would you give to summer interns leaving their posts?

-Carla

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