5 tips to Outshine Your Internship

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Internships are an inevitable part of any academic programmes and courses to gain practical aspects of learning. It is the period where you rapidly grow your domain knowledge, interpersonal skills and organizational culture. It is un doubtful that an internship can add a lot of value to your course, your final placements and your career ahead. Internships, whether it is mandatory or not, can teach you a lot if you set the right goals.

Here are 5 important tips to keep in mind which may apply before, during and after the internship to tag yourself as a successful intern and I would like to name it S.C.O.P.E of an internship.

S for Selection:

The first and important tip for you is to choose your internship wisely. Do not rush or take unwanted peer pressure in finding an internship that is easily available or those which pays you glittering stipends. Your key priority of the internship should be learning, and you should not compromise this on any other parameters.


Come up with at least five parameters that you would expect in an internship. It can be your knowledge of interest, dream company or the place. However, you must be certain that the internship which you choose will add value to your academic program and near future career.
So, choose an internship purely based on your self-interest and half of your job gets done if you choose the right one.

C for Communication:

Many interns have the misconception that internships are solely to teach you how to work. Of course, the prime motto is to do that, but it is not limited to only that. One of the easiest periods to learn communication skills and other interpersonal skills is during your internship. Just like the hard skills that you learn from the organisation, you must equally focus on soft skills and try to enhance your emotional competence.

Internship opens the doors to grab many types of professional communication skills like one-to-one communication, group discussions, email communications and presentations. All you must do is try to utilise all these opportunities by proper preparation and enthusiasm.

O for Opportunities:

To add on to the previous tip, there will be many other opportunities to utilise during your internship tenure like networking. Yes! If you are a person who is looking forward to making good networks that could help you mould your career, then this is the time to work hard in creating one.
As an intern, you must try communicating with employees at various levels of the organisation and make effective conversations.

Spend your time in the office cafeteria by meeting co-interns, your team members and other employees whom you have access to. The connections that you make from the internship are vital and can help you later for final placements and so on. Never forget to add them to your LinkedIn network and sharing insightful content even after your internship tenure.

P for Proactiveness:


Right from Day 1 of your internship, you must cultivate an urge to learn from people around you and the organisation in general. You must try to participate in all the activities held in the organisation during the internship tenure that you are given access. Never miss the chance of attending a meeting with stakeholders, clients or even inter-team meetings. Try taking part in monthly/weekly team planning meetings which can give a lot of insights on the activities that each member of the organisation is doing.

Always consult your internship guide asking for something voluntary or giving a suggestion after being understood a process. Never shy away to ask doubts throughout your internship because a proactive intern is always on the go asking questions and feeding recommendations.

E for Evaluation:

Whether your internship is 6 weeks or 6 months long, whether you applied all your theoretical knowledge into practice or not. One thing you need to regularly do is to evaluate your performance and take necessary actions to improve. Self-evaluation is a great method during the initial stages of your internship to assess your performance. Analysing your tasks once a week would be a decent period range to evaluate. You could also systematically list your weekly accomplishments which can boost your confidence level.

While you list your accomplishments, it is equally important to note your learning from the task and understand the measures you could take to improve your work. You must also consistently take feedback from your internship guide and incorporate the same in your corrective actions.
Unless you evaluate your performance in regular periodic intervals, you will not evolve as a successful intern. Finally, never forget to take written feedback at the end of your internship from all the employees whom you worked during the internship.

To conclude I would like to recommend you two additional tips to keep in mind during your internship tenure. First is to maintain an internship dairy which can be handy during your final assessment and secondly you must stick to your deadlines and complete internship tasks on time.

Written by - Arun .S.

Edited by - Nidhi Verma