Guest blogger Kylee Hefty ’14
Acquiring internship experience is essential to post-graduate success. Because of this, it is vital to make an excellent impression on your host despite the high pressure and time-restricted nature of many internship opportunities. It is important to know strategies for overcoming common problems that interns face in order to maintain productivity and keep up with the demands of a professional environment.
This summer, I have been given the incredible opportunity to intern for MMI Public Relations in Cary, North Carolina. My work for MMI mostly consists of writing press releases, conducting research, and logging information for my supervisor’s clients. By explaining some of the biggest roadblocks that I have come across interning and how I ultimately overcame these adversities, I will, hopefully, shed some light on some ways to conquer common internship setbacks.
While most of what I have learned about internship troubleshooting has come from my own trial and error experiences, I have come across a few new resources that have been helpful to me as well. Author of “All Work, No Pay,” Lauren Berger, often referred to as the “intern queen,” offers some great advice for getting the most out of an internship, tips that can be extremely useful when applied to facing common intern dilemmas. In this particular video she briefly touches on some strategies for both taking advantage of intern opportunities as well as her own experience as an entrepreneur. While the focus of my post is slightly different, I am aiming toward the same overall message: have courage, work hard, be responsible, and most importantly, learn from your mistakes.
I’ve chosen to share two situations that I have found myself in while interning this summer that I feel were the most valuable to learn how to overcome:
Situation A: “I’m not familiar with my company’s client, but I’ve been assigned to produce X document to represent them”
One of the most typical issues facing interns is a general lack of exposure to the host company’s clientele. Of course, because interns are new to the company and often have fewer hours with the company than paid staff members, they are less prepared to deal with clients and have less time to learn about them through events and meetings. This lack of information on clients can become a serious setback when it comes to producing quality client documents. In my case, the first time I was asked to write a Press Release for one of my supervisor’s clients, I realized that not only was I new to MMI, I was also new to representing MMI clients. I needed to quickly learn about the specific client and the industry they participated in as well.
In this type of situation, my advice is to remain calm and follow the following steps:
1) Read the other documents in the file where you’ve been asked to save the assignment (unless you have been asked not to do so): Here you will find which information about the client is consistent throughout the documents your company produces for them and, therefore, determine which parts of their identity the client most prefers to highlight in specific document types. Additionally, the information you find will help you to gain strategies for integrating favored general information about the company with descriptions of events, happenings or other news.
2) Fill in the gaps: This is the time to pinpoint any information you haven’t been able to find in reading past documents for the client. At this point, using the Internet as a tool to research remaining questions can be a great way to learn about the client. Of course, always be careful to use credible sources. This can include defining any unknown terms used in past documents as well as finding any extra information about the client that is specific to the document you’ve been asked to create. Make sure that you conduct specific searches to avoid wasting time collecting irrelevant information.
3) Ask your supervisor (ONLY if you’ve completed or exhausted steps 1 and 2): At the end of your client investigation, if you still have unanswered questions, it is okay to ask your supervisor. When asking your supervisor questions like these, be sure to use specific and understandable phrasing to make sure it will not take up too much of your supervisor’s time (general or vague questions won’t yield helpful answers for your work purposes anyway). Try to ask yes or no questions or questions that demand only one particular answer (for example: who should I quote for the x company’s press release regarding x topic?).
Situation B: “I’ve been assigned a project using program x but I’ve have never used program x before”
Though most students gain proficiency in a multitude of programs throughout their primary and secondary schooling, sometimes internships provide an opportunity for students to get to know new programs or programs they happened to have had little exposure to during their time in school and in past work experiences. During my time at MMI, I have come across multiple programs that I had little or no experience using in which cases I found that I needed to quickly find a way to master these programs in order to finish my assigned tasks. If you find yourself in this situation, this is my advice:
1) Many programs function in similar ways as others that exist. Use what you know of other computer programs, and apply it to the new program until you discover how to carry out actions in the program.
2) Use the trial and error technique. Try clicking buttons, using shortcuts and making manual additions and undo those actions that are not what you want: the key is to immerse yourself in the program so that you are comfortable using it to fulfill your assignment.
Obviously, these two situations do not account for the entire range of problems that interns face. Check out Part 2 of my post for a quick list of tips to help address other situations.
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