Some of you are spending the summer at a company that has a formal internship process, which usually makes full-time offers to its interns. Many of you landed terrific experiences for the summer, but since the company has no formal internship program, it probably has no formal “offer” process, and you’re wondering what (if anything) you can do to help turn the summer experience into an offer. And a few of you who are especially ambitious are also asking the question: what should I be doing to get a full-time opportunity? Let me offer a few scenarios and some thoughts based on students’ experiences in past years:
Your Company Has A Formal Internship Program and You Want to Get an Offer
Read my blog from this past April, Getting Started.
Four things you can do if your company has a history of making full-time offers to interns:
- Nail your projects. Over-deliver. Exceed expectations.
- Network. Get to know as many people as you can. Not just in your function—across the company. Not just senior people—people at all levels. When making offers, decision-makers ask for input from lots of sources. You want to be known as interested, and interesting.
- Ask for more. Ask your boss how you can help with other projects. Ask if you can help with recruiting.
- Ask for feedback NOW AND at the end of the summer. Listen to the feedback and let your behavior reflect what you have learned.
Your Company Has No Formal Internship Program and You Want to Get an Offer
So you are having a great summer experience, learning and contributing, and you believe you have found an environment in which you can thrive. Yet your company has no history of interns or making full-time offers to interns. What can you do? The first thing is easy and is the same as above: Nail your projects. Over-deliver. Exceed expectations. Nothing can help your cause more than demonstrating that you can add value to the firm.
From here it gets a bit more complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Be direct, honest and forthright. Since you are about half-way through the summer, it is reasonable to sit down and ask for feedback and discuss how the summer is going. Try to focus the conversation on your performance, not on the projects. Ask for leadership feedback: Ask if your manager feels you are meeting the right people? Ask if he/she feels you are communicating well? Ask if you are focusing on the right things? When the conversation naturally comes around to your manager, asking you how you are doing, or how you feel, this is your opportunity to express your sincere delight in what you are doing and the people with whom you are working. Tell your manager that by the end of the summer, you will demonstrate to him/her that you are indispensable. Tell them that so far this company is exactly the type of company that you would like to work for full-time when you graduate next spring.
Now, assuming that the feedback has been positive and that you are doing a good job, you might in this conversation even go as far as to ask: is it possible that the company might be pleased enough with your work that they would think about extending a full-time offer at the end of the summer? Listen carefully to any feedback that might give you insights into what, if anything, you might do in your final four weeks to help the company make that decision. Be prepared to hear that the company could never make a hiring decision that far in advance. Many companies will not make hiring decisions until 4-12 weeks prior to the need. Don’t press the discussion too far in this meeting, but by initiating the discussion, you have planted seeds of possibilities. (One additional caveat: with whom should you have this discussion? Sometimes your immediate manager might not be senior enough to be involved in these types of decisions. If there is an HR person, you can seek a meeting with that person, again asking for feedback, and then planting the similar ideas of a possible full-time engagement. If there is no HR person, then try to have the conversation with as senior a person with which you feel comfortable.)
Then at the end of the summer, ask for another meeting seeking additional feedback on your performance and your leadership competencies. The discussion should go as above. When it turns to you, now you can state your firm interest in wanting to work for the company full time. Express how you feel you can add value. Ask what you might need to do to seek a full-time position. You can even discuss the MBA job hiring process along the lines of:
In the next few months I’ll be returning to Darden and begin the MBA job search process. Darden has over 100 companies that come to campus and interview us for positions, and of course, I’ll be networking with alumni in companies like ours seeking a position as well. I was actually wondering and hoping that you guys here at XYZ Corp might be able to lean into a position for full time starting next summer and make an offer now. Since you know what I can do and you’ve been pleased with my performance, you can rest assured that you are getting a known quantity. Then I could accept the offer and we’d both be out of the market. Is that a possibility?
While this wording may not be perfect, it is direct and it presents that something is in it for the company as well as you.
In the meantime, should you be job searching?
No, and yes. You should not be job searching on your employer’s time. You will distract yourself from doing as good a job as you can, and that behavior is unfair to your employer. Obviously. But you should always be networking—both within your current company and outside. Especially if you are in your target city, you should be using every opportunity (the occasional breakfast or lunch, or any free evening) to get to know other alumni in the area and in your target job market. While it’s ambitious, you might want to have at least 2-3 in person meetings a week. You might also want to plan to stay in the target city at least a week after your internship ends to spend the full week networking and visiting alumni. Make a pitch something like the following via email or a phone call:
“Hey John (Darden alum from the last five years at one of your target companies or target industries), my name is Everette, a rising SY at Darden. I’m spending the summer here in Atlanta with XYZ Corp in finance and having a great summer. I got your name from (insert here the name of who told you about the alumnus, or if you got his/her name from the alumni database, state that). I was wondering if you might have a half hour before or after work or during lunch sometime to meet for a cup of coffee and tell me a little more about yourself, your company, the type of work you do, how you got into it. I’d be happy to come over to a spot close to your office if you’re willing to carve out a little time.”
If the company at which the alum works is an On-Grounds company, then you should mention that:
“Hey John, my name is Everette, a rising SY at Darden. I’m spending the summer here in Atlanta with XYZ Corp in finance and having a great summer. I know you were on-Grounds with your company last year, and I enjoyed getting to know more about your company during the briefing. I believe this summer experience has really added to my skill set and I’ve enjoyed being here with XYZ Company, but my real interest still lies in working for your company. I was wondering if you might have a half hour before or after work or during lunch sometime to meet for a cup of coffee and tell me a little more about yourself and how you see the recruiting process unfolding this year. I’d be happy to come over to a spot close to your office if you’re willing to carve out a little time.”
Or, one more possibility: you may find the names of key recruiters from some On-Grounds companies in the CDC database and reach out to them:
“Hey John, my name is Everette, a rising SY at Darden. I’m spending the summer here in Atlanta with XYZ Corp in finance and having a great summer. We met at Darden last year, and I felt we had a great conversation, but in the interview process, the feedback I received was that I didn’t perhaps have enough experience. I believe this summer experience has really added to my skill set and I’ve enjoyed being here with XYZ Company, but my real interest still lies in working for your company. I was wondering if it might be possible while I’m still here in Atlanta to visit your office and have an informational interview with you and anyone else you think is appropriate.”
Can you use this time to prepare for interviews in the fall?
One of the most productive things you can do right now is to update your resume. I’m sure you are thinking that, since you aren’t even done with your project, it’s hard to write your resume bullet points. But you really have to do it. See Create Your Summer Bullet Points. In addition, the Darden SY resume is due August 10th 2009, so you’ll have to complete it before you finish your internship anyway. You are better off working on it two or three different times over the next few weeks, at least getting the bullet points started (and also deciding what you are going to remove), than waiting until the last minute when the resume is due, and your projects are coming to a head, and you are too busy to even sleep (and you thought Darden was rigorous).
Another thing that you can do is prepare for interviews by doing three things:
- Working on your story (who are you and why are you in front of this recruiter at this very minute)
- Work on your stories for interviews: think about the standard questions and begin creating a grid of answers on your STAR question map:
3. Practice interviewing on InterviewStream.