From Intern To Employee

Tara Weiss, 04.27.09, 06:00 PM EDT

Turn that summer job into the start of your career.

In this economy, a recent college graduate's best prospect for landing a full-time job may be turning that summer internship into a
permanent positioin once the summer is over. The trick to achieving that feat: Don't think of it as just a summer gig.

"Treat it as a 10- to 12-week job interview," says Alex Taylor, a vice president of university relations at Bank of America ( BAC -
news - people ) in Charlotte, N.C.

Since first impressions are important, dress professionally. Arrive on the first day more dressed up than usual. It's a sign of respect and a
safety measure--you can never be too dressy, but you can be underdressed. Female interns should wear a skirt or dress that comes to the
knee (or just above) or slacks and a top that covers their shoulders. Never wear flip flops, show cleavage or wear anything that's ripped or
torn. Male interns should wear slacks or khakis with a button-down shirt and tie. Take your dressing cues from senior level colleagues after
the first few days.

In Pictures: From Intern To Employee

Within the first week, make an appointment with your manager to establish goals. Discuss specific skills you hope to gain over the summer
and other projects you'd like to work on. Listen openly to the type of work your managers assign and be enthusiastic.

"Not every task you're going to do is something you'll enjoy, but have the attitude that these are building blocks to your career," says Tom
Musbach, managing editor of Yahoo! Hot Jobs. "Once you show you can be trusted with small tasks, managers will give you more
responsibility."

That first meeting is also a good time to ask your manager how he or she prefers to communicate. This is particularly useful when you have
questions and when you need to provide project updates. Ask if he or she prefers to talk in-person or via e-mail or instant messenger.
Some managers want interns to wait till the end of the day (when they have several questions gathered), and others don't mind if interns
ask them questions as they come up.

Don't be shy about asking questions, especially if you need clarification on an assignment. No one wants to be a pest, but it's best to get it
right the first time. "Asking smart questions is a positive quality in an employee," says Holly Stroupe, a former Bank of America intern who
was hired full-time as an assistant vice president for leadership development following her internship in 2005. "It helps you understand what
the business is striving toward. It also shows your level of engagement, and that's what employers are looking for. It shows you're
motivated to do well."

Keep a work journal throughout the summer that includes new skills you've learned and completed assignments. "They'll be great building
blocks for your résumé," says Musbach. Also, save any complimentary e-mails or notes to get ideas for potential references.

Doing quality work is just part of your job as an intern. You also have to network. Most companies make this easy by hosting events for
interns throughout the summer. Attend all of them; they're great for mingling with fellow interns, an important group since you're all in the
same field. As your career progresses, they can tell you about job openings at other companies, recommend certain employers and
introduce you to important people in the industry.

Those intern events are also ideal opportunities to meet staffers and higher-ups in other departments. Take an interest in how they got to
where they are and ask what they like about working there. Another good tip for getting to know the full-time staffers: Eat where they eat. If
there's a break room or cafeteria that employees frequent, eat there and introduce yourself. Once you've broken the ice, ask them to join
you for a cup of coffee to get advice on a project you're working on. People generally like to feel like they're experts.

There are plenty of ways to network--and they don't all have to be formal. If the company has a softball team, join it. If everyone goes out
for drinks after work, meet them at the bar. But just have one drink and nurse it throughout the night.

Meeting colleagues in casual settings makes the more formal meetings easier. Sitting in on staff meetings might be intimidating at first, but
once you've been to a few, participate. "Ask questions and contribute ideas," says Betty Smith, manager of university recruiting at Hewlett
Packard ( HPQ -news - people ). "Ask questions in such a way that's on target and productive for the meeting."
When it comes to communicating with others inside or outside the company, remember to keep correspondence professional. Incoming
interns are used to text messaging casually. But when composing a business e-mail, use the person's full name and always use proper
capitalization and punctuation. End the note respectfully and don't overuse exclamation points. Also, be sure to only reply to the necessary
person--don't cc the entire company on an e-mail.

Before the summer ends, get your colleagues' contact information and send thank-you notes. Network with them throughout the year by
sending casual e-mails asking how they're doing and what interesting projects they're working on. These people are vital contacts--not only
can they serve as references, they might also recommend you for a job at the company or let you know about positions at other companies.

When it comes to landing a job, it's all about who you know.

The Evolution Of Interns

J. Isaac Spradlin, 04.27.09, 04:00 PM EDT
Their roots go back almost a thousand years, but they didn't really exist until the last few decades.

Almost everyone seems to agree that an internship is a valuable part of career development. But if you were in college before the 1980s,
chances are you never did anything called interning. So where did the experience come from, and how did it become such a seeming
necessity for today's future job-seekers?

Experts agree that in the largest sense, internships descend from the professional apprenticeships that originated with the trade guilds of
Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. Master craftsmen and tradesmen took in young learners and gave them menial tasks that make
filing and photocopying look plush. Apprentices served one master for most of their teen years. Then they could graduate to journeyman
and start earning better wages. Often they chose to continue with the same masters.

The 1911 book Labor and Apprenticeship, by Reginald Bray, includes a section that discusses the main objectives of the apprenticeship
system: supervision, training and filling job openings. It sounds a lot like today's internships, but there are key differences.

"The current system has much less structure," says Andrew Wender Cohen, a history professor at Syracuse University. "Apprenticeship
would have gotten you into a guild, or in the early 20th century, would have gotten you into the union," he says. "The concrete benefits of
apprenticeship were more clear and were typically contractually stated."

The guild system eventually gave way to industrialization and the rise of formal professional education. Between the 1890s and 1920s,
fields like medicine began to adapt the practical experience of apprenticeship into training even as that training became more scientific and
lecture-based.

"Social work, engineering, teaching and business all embraced the professional ideal," says Sanford Jacoby, professor and vice chairman
of the University of California, Los Angeles, Anderson School of Management. That ideal, Jacoby adds, "was a combination of academic
and practical knowledge, usually with certification of some sort, internal governance, like a guild, and also an ethos of social responsibility.
There had always been an apprenticeship in medicine, but now it became a standard part of education, an internship."

In the early 20th century, the business-world analog to the internship was the role of messenger boys or copy boy. Cohen points out that
Andrew Carnegie started out that way, as a bobbin boy who changed spools of thread in a textile factory. He used the familiarity he gained
with that particular business to begin to learn how companies worked.

Not until the late 1960s did formal internships as we know them start to appear.

"When I was in school I did an internship," says Victoria Davis, internship director for the human and organizational development
department at Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Human Development. She was an intern in 1986. "But it was still quite
unusual."

As the demand for knowledge workers increased, so did the importance of the internship. "People began using it as a recruiting tool, and
that's what it is now," Davis says. Most recruiting happens, she adds, in the finance, entertainment and health care industries, so that's
where many internships are. She adds that when internships really came in, during the 1980s, they were developed first by business
schools.
In fields like business and communications, the internship offered a great way to build relationships and earn occupational experience. "I
went to school so long ago that there weren't even school programs in media, let alone internships," says Lynn Schafer Gross, author
ofThe Internship Experience and longtime professor of radio, television and film. When she started in the 1950s, "networking was the real
way to get in," she says.

In the late 1970s and '80s, more and more college faculty members began to establish internship programs after hearing about them from
colleagues at other institutions. Universities took the lead in making internships more appealing and productive for students by giving
course credit for them, and advisers pushed internships as a way to get ahead in the competition for jobs.

But as internships became more commonplace, students started using them as a way to test-drive careers they might not even be
interested in. "There's a lot of value in finding out what you don't want to do, so you don't get stuck in it," says Gross. "But that wasn't so
much the case with internships back in the '70s. When people got one then, it was pretty much, 'I really want this because it's going to be
my career.'"

One side effect of the growing ubiquity of internships, Davis warns, is that that some people who take them aren't properly motivated: "You
have a whole lot of students now who do a whole lot of internships only because they need to have the work experience on their records."
Those students are more likely to take internships that don't advance their careers, she says. "They really just need to fill in the square"

The internship has proved effective in preparing many for today's job market, and experts don't think it's about to change substantially, at
least for now. "If there is a big change," Gross says, "it will be brought about by technology."

Interning When All They Ask You To Do Is File

Emily Schmitt, 04.27.09, 06:00 PM EDT
You thought you'd have serious work to do. Here's how to fix that.

Not all internships are what they're cracked up to be. All too often you're promised glamorous, or at least challenging and instructive, work
and find yourself doing nothing more than running errands, making coffee and filing. You thought you'd be involved with serious projects.

What are you to do if you find yourself in that fix? The first step you should take is preventive--before you even land the internship--say
many college career counselors. Your best bet at warding off clerical tasks is to define your goals before your search for an internship.
Once you've found and applied for your top picks, be sure to know your objectives before heading to the interviews.

Students have a golden opportunity to discuss their goals at the end of an interview, says Greg Iaccarino, career and internship adviser at
the University of Wisconsin. That's when most interviewers solicit questions. Ask what kinds of projects previous interns were given and
discuss what specific ideas they might have for you. Be specific and prepared; don't just ramble and generalize. If you show yourself to be
well prepared and eager to work hard, the interviewer will be more likely to let you take on serious projects.

Once the internship starts, make sure you're really being given the kinds of tasks you discussed in the interview. If not, you may need to
talk to your internship director. It may be a difficult discussion to have, notes Janice Morand, project manager for the Internship and Career
Center at the University of California--Davis. She warns to be sure you don't whine to your supervisor; rather, show that you want to help
the company. You may be surprised by what you hear.

"I've had students who came to me and said they didn't do anything at their internship," Morand says. "Then their employer would call and
say they were the best intern in a long time, and they couldn't wait to hire them."

Even if you weren't clairvoyant enough to discuss your goals before the internship, you still can work to make the best of the situation.

Always remember to perform every task to the best of your abilities, says Jamie Fedorko, author of The Intern Files--even if that means
making a killer cup of coffee. "No matter what your responsibilities are, you have to execute those tasks 100%," he says. "If you don't,
asking for more sounds counterproductive."

Once you've done the duties asked of you, Fedorko suggests, compile a list with two columns. On one side, put down the projects you
expected to be taking on, and on the other what you're actually doing. Once you've completed the list, ask yourself how realistic your
expectations were for an intern. If you think they did sound reasonable, discuss the possibilities with your coordinator. It might be as simple
as asking if, after you get coffee, you can take notes during the meeting.
Why just that? "The idea is, the more you get involved with little things, the more you'll be able to get involved with other things," Fedorko
says.