Internship lessons
Rajan Kukreja, MBA2
Issue date: 10/10/05 Section: Opinions
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1. Explore early and then focus: I heard this from OCD before coming to Michigan a ton of times, yet took it all too lightly. I wanted to start broad and keep my options open (like most other B-School students) - especially because most of us are at business school as career changers. However, within the first week on campus, there were company presentations - and five of them at the same time slot - so I was forced to take my pick. This by itself was an important way of focusing. [Yet, if you have talked to three to five people in three to four broad career paths of your interest (which is only nine to 20 conversations), you would be so much better prepared to focus.]
2. Designate time for you internship search as you would do for an extra class: This is a serious process demanding a lot of effort. The best advice that someone gave me was to treat the internship search just like taking one or two additional classes and literally add the time commitment to my weekly schedule with designated times. This approach, though adopted very late in the game by me, was very helpful.
3. Prioritize your opportunities: I had an excel spreadsheet with the list of all opportunities I was interested in, their important deadlines, their status, and also their ranking in my eyes. This ranking was critical and helped me in three invaluable ways. First, it forced me to really state why I believed opportunity X would be better than opportunity Y. This exposed my level of knowledge and/or interest in specific opportunities often motivating me to learn more. Second, with only limited bid points, it was important to know how much I would be willing to bid for a company. This ranking helped me curb the reckless desire to bid excessively for a "good opportunity" if it was not among my "top opportunities". Finally, this helped establish a cut off in terms of accepting or declining interviews or offers, once I had received my first offer. This really helped save precious time!
2. Designate time for you internship search as you would do for an extra class: This is a serious process demanding a lot of effort. The best advice that someone gave me was to treat the internship search just like taking one or two additional classes and literally add the time commitment to my weekly schedule with designated times. This approach, though adopted very late in the game by me, was very helpful.
3. Prioritize your opportunities: I had an excel spreadsheet with the list of all opportunities I was interested in, their important deadlines, their status, and also their ranking in my eyes. This ranking was critical and helped me in three invaluable ways. First, it forced me to really state why I believed opportunity X would be better than opportunity Y. This exposed my level of knowledge and/or interest in specific opportunities often motivating me to learn more. Second, with only limited bid points, it was important to know how much I would be willing to bid for a company. This ranking helped me curb the reckless desire to bid excessively for a "good opportunity" if it was not among my "top opportunities". Finally, this helped establish a cut off in terms of accepting or declining interviews or offers, once I had received my first offer. This really helped save precious time!
