High Five Corner

Posts

A collection of bad ideas...

... or internship pitfalls to steer clear of! I was reminded by a good friend following my posts that I focused on tips of what to do to succeed, but failed to share my learnings on things that were a common denominator for failures. I don’t personally like a post focusing on the negative, but I could see the value of at least offering the most common pitfalls to avoid – there will be plenty others that are unique to each situation that I could never possibly cover. I think it goes without saying that NOT doing the five main points of my last post is not a good idea, since those are the most common DO’s for success. So I will not spend time talking about those DON’Ts. I will focus instead on some other things to avoid: • Poor Time Management. Besides being on time for work and meetings, being on time with the deliverables assigned to us is non-negotiable. We must at all costs avoid the student syndrome of leaving things to be started last minute, because a failure in this case h...

You got it! Now what?

Congratulations!! You landed your internship position! By now, you are likely excited and terrified at the same time – I know I was! It took a lot of different people around me providing helpful insights before I felt ready for that first opportunity… I learned a lot from it, and after sharing those learnings with other first-timers over the years, and also by observing what worked and what didn’t through the tens of interns under my eyes, here are a few DO’s that were common and invariably present for all those that succeeded: • Be professional. And I don’t mean it as in being someone different than yourself. Being on time for work and for meetings, dressing in accordance to the dress code of the work environment, being respectful when treating colleagues, honing in our communication style to be clear and concise, maintaining a positive attitude, not panicking under pressure, and practicing being a team player: all of those are ways to be professional, and are important during ...

Swipe right, swipe left… or The Art of Interviews

Yes, you read that right… Dating Apps are the first thing that comes to mind when I think about internship – or job – interviews. Because let’s be honest… An interview is very much like a first date with someone – but a much faster and straight to the point one, and with very different expected outcomes, of course! If this is your first internship application, it is also likely your very first professional interview. And just like a first date, it is normally awkward! Even when we know the other person as a friend or an acquaintance, a first date might be odd. So meeting a complete stranger that has decision power over something you are interested on might feel much more daunting… My goal here is to share a few tips that were passed down to me as I got ready for my first interviews, and that I observed as success factors in hundreds of intern candidates I interviewed over the years since then… 1. Do your research: have a good sense of what the company does and their main values ...

The holy grail – of internships…

… does not really exist! There is no perfect internship, as there is nothing perfect in real life. But there is plenty of options available, and as long as we understand both ourselves and the openings at large, we can then work on doing some matchmaking. Here are a few considerations that can help us find the best fit to our needs and aspirations. First, by keeping an open mind … Sometimes we get so hung up on a particular position, or on a particular company, that we miss on every other opportunity out there. Focus is a good thing, but hyper focus might just be a trap that gets us stressed out. Keeping our options open change the game from a single yes or no answer related to a unique position, to an almost certain chance of a yes for at least one of many positions. Then, by doing some research . We might really admire a brand or company, but not all work in that company is done internally. For instance, a lot of companies do not do their own advertisement – inst...

To be or not to be… an intern?

The short answer is YES! The longer answer is YES, as early as you can, as often as you can, for as long as you can! Internships are our first opportunity to experiment different types of work in real life. They help us test our assumptions about what a certain profession entail, to dip our feet and test the waters, before we ever need to fully commit to it. Meaning that even in the remote possibility we absolutely hate it, it is still useful to have learned that before we invest years getting ready for that profession. It is funny how many entry level jobs still require previous experience. Sounds like a conundrum, but internship might be a perfect answer to acquiring that experience needed to later land an entry level job. It also applies to those of us thinking about being entrepreneurs: no matter how innovative our ideas for a product or service are (and I am sure your idea is brilliant!), we all need to start somewhere, and learning how to pave the path from working wit...