Attention, interns: Now that summer is half over, it’s time to take stock of your summer internship and make sure you’re moving in the right direction. So writes Jodi Glickman in a blogpost for the Harvard Business Review.
“No one cares more about managing your career than you do,” she writes. So how do you make the experience worthwhile both from a learning perspective and from a strategic perspective — i.e. landing a full-time offer, securing a great letter of reference, or simply making a positive impression on your colleagues to leverage going forward?
Glickman offers a way to think about where you are now, where you’re going, and how to get there — she calls it Your Personal Matrix and it includes a snapshot of your Current Situation along with your Wish List of where you hope to go/be:
| Current Situation: A | Wish List: Z |
| What you’re doing or have done | What you want or hope to do |
| Who you have worked with | Who you want or hope to work with |
Current Situation
The midpoint of your internship is a great time to take stock of where you’ve been. What have you learned and/or contributed thus far? What are you particularly proud of?
Wish List
Your Wish List is more fun to dream up and represents your strategic direction or goal post, Glickman writes. Where do you want to be by summer’s end? What types of projects do you want to work on that are reasonable and realistic? Who can help make those goals happen?
Now What?
Once you’ve developed your matrix, you have your starting point (Point A) and your end goal (Point Z). Start plotting points that will get you from A to Z with tangible, manageable steps. You can sit down with your manager for an informal conversation or at your midpoint review and ask to work with certain people or projects on your Wish List. Whether or not you actually share your matrix with your manager or mentor, use it to guide your discussions around career development and next steps.
