Tips For Completing Your One-Month Internship Impressively

Updated 24 October 2022

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An internship is a temporary role in an organisation that a student or a recent graduate pursues to gain work experience and industry exposure. Apart from experience, these short-term positions help interns to develop and improve their soft and hard skills, build professional relationships and add qualifications to their resume. Learning more about this opportunity can help you set some internship goals and improve your future job prospects. In this article, we define a one-month internship, discuss how you may impress your manager during this time and share some benefits of completing an internship.

What Is A One-Month Internship?

A one-month internship is a short-term professional learning experience that helps students or trainees gain work experience that applies to their career interests. In this role, interns work with industry leaders to complete projects, gain knowledge about a company's routine operations and learn how teams collaborate to accomplish shared goals. An intern may pursue this role for a month to fulfil educational requirements or work towards their career goals. A company may choose to give interns a fixed sum of money, when it becomes a paid internship. Interns can use this opportunity to build a professional network.

Companies often prefer to recruit candidates who possess professional experience, hence completing an internship may prove to be beneficial in the longer term. When an individual has worked as an intern, it may demonstrate to hiring managers their dedication to their career goals. Sometimes, an internship may lead to a full-time job within the company itself. By working in an industry temporarily, an individual may also discover if a career path is right for them. A month-long internship typically involves a range of responsibilities and accountabilities, which interns can use to help build a quality resume.

Tips To Impress The Manager During Your Internship

Below are some tips you may use to make your internship interesting and demonstrate your strengths and abilities to your manager:

Set internship objectives clearly

Treat the internship as a full-time role and plan it accordingly. Be clear about what you intend to achieve in the position and show your manager that you are goal-oriented. Discuss your career goals with the manager, as they may help you work on relevant assignments and develop new skills. This way, you may impress your manager by showing your drive to achieve your career objectives. When developing internship objectives, try to keep them realistic and achievable. You may impress your manager by sharing with them your objectives, which could include:

Seeking to learn industry-specific skills or improve the ones you already possess
Wishing to work on challenging projects that are relevant to your education and professional aspirations
Aspiring to work with a team or a department that may help you gain robust industry exposure
Willing to learn as much as possible from experienced colleagues and managers
Seeking to gain in-depth knowledge about how the industry functions
Wishing to build a quality professional network with other individuals

Build professional relationships

Getting to build a professional network is one of the benefits of pursuing an internship. Interns who work towards building strong professional relationships may convey to managers their relationship-building skills. This may also show your ability to work with different teams, helping you make a good impression on your manager. Building relationships at work involves interacting with peers or a mentor. Below are some topics that you may utilise to start conversations at work:

Ask colleagues what interests them the most about the field and any useful industry insights they can share.
Find out from colleagues more about the necessary skills to succeed in the industry and how you may work towards developing them.
Ask for advice on what to keep in mind during the internship or how to complete tasks within deadlines successfully.

Pursue new opportunities

Pursuing new and challenging opportunities within an organisation as an intern may help the manager recognise your growth mindset. This involves successfully completing tasks and your internship. When you show the manager that you require minimal supervision, you may encourage them to assign you more complex tasks. This may also help the manager appreciate your willingness to gain valuable industry experience. Ensure that you remain available to work on more tasks and ask other professionals regularly if they require your help.

Value collaboration

Your ability to collaborate with other professionals is a transferable skill that applies to almost all industries. When managers acknowledge your collaboration skills, they realise that you possess the ability to work well with others and that your work ethic aligns with the company's culture. Collaboration involves aspects such as active listening and clear communication, along with your ability to positively receive and implement constructive criticism. By working as part of a team, you may also be able to demonstrate your collaborative problem-solving skills.

Take responsibility and be accountable

Accountability in the workplace means completing tasks to the best of your ability. Completing tasks successfully shows the manager that you are dependable and that you can prioritise your work to accomplish high-level goals. If you are not able to complete a task within the deadline, ensure that you let your manager know. This shows a responsible attitude towards your work and fosters a positive relationship with them.

If there are errors in your work, accept them to show that you value self-reflection and take responsibility for your work. Taking ownership of your oversights and focusing on solving problems are important aspects of accountability. This mindset shows your manager that you concentrate on overcoming challenges and use critical thinking and problem-solving skills to develop outcomes that are beneficial for the team. In this way, you may even be able to demonstrate your leadership skills to the manager.

Seek the guidance of a mentor

Mentors offer advice to less experienced professionals and can often influence the overall development of a mentee. Having a mentor in your network may show your willingness to receive guidance from skilled industry professionals. It also conveys your eagerness to gain knowledge that a professional has acquired over several years working in the industry. When you seek the support of a mentor, you show the manager that you have a strong focus on setting and achieving goals, increasing your professional network and identifying resources.

Benefits Of An Internship

Here is how an internship may help you achieve your career goals:

Gaining work experience: Pursuing an internship may help you gain new skills, improve your existing ones and acquire industry-specific knowledge. This can help you to impress recruiters and secure entry-level jobs.
Developing research experience: During an internship, you may have the opportunity to conduct in-depth research, like analysing data to identify useful business insights. By performing research tasks, you may become skilled in using your research skills at work and helping your team or an organisation make data-driven decisions.
Working in different departments and performing varied tasks: By working in multiple departments, you may meet different people and learn more about the company, its structure, the projects it has and its role in the industry. When you work on a variety of tasks, you improve your professional knowledge by learning how to fulfil varied responsibilities efficiently.
Building a professional network: During your internship, you can connect with professionals who may offer you career guidance or share tips to be successful in your field. Building a supportive professional network also means that these individuals may refer you to a job in the future.
Creating an engaging resume: Some professionals choose to pursue internships in different organisations to develop a strong knowledge base. List all your internship experiences on your resume, helping recruiters to recognise the steps you have taken towards achieving your career goals.
Receiving recommendations and securing references: If you have performed well during your internship, your managers are more likely to recommend you for open positions in other organisations. Job references that you secure during your internship may help you convey to recruiters that you are a suitable candidate for a position in their company.
Becoming more confident: Internships may help you gain new skills, meet experienced professionals, work in different departments and interact with senior staff. All this knowledge helps you to become more confident about your personality and work experience, along with possessing the ability to evaluate your own performance.