How to turn your internship into a job offer

Don't think of this as a quote unquote internship. I think that when people go into it and say you know, I'm an intern or this is just a 90 day internship. They're not giving it everything that they could. What we tell them is think of this as a 90 day working interview. Go in there, do everything you can, say yes to as many projects as you can and really create a name for yourself and put yourself in a position that they can't afford to lose you. (light music) Small things matter. So when you're sending an email, if every time you send an email you spell words wrong, I will know that you do not pay attention to detail and details matter. If you don't pay attention to the small stuff, the big stuff's going to be worse. A lot of times it's about taking initiative. I think it's about saying hey I don't know this, but I want to learn it and I want you to give me a shot and I want to sit in on this project. So a lot of times when I've had our interns say I don't know anything about this but I want to learn more about it, it's been a great experience for us 'cause I've been able to kind of mentor them and why we're making some decisions that we are and I think they've gotten something out of that as well. I've done a lot of different things and in every different thing I've tried to learn as much as I can about what I'm doing and I've tried to make it more than a job. Make it more of a, it's gonna sound cheesy, but make it more of a life style. Like when I was working for NASA, space was my life style for that summer or when I was working for a medical device company, I read as many articles as I could about medical devices and so I have this breath of knowledge from these different experiences and I think that has really helped me secure recommendations and referrals down the road for my future jobs. Showing your boss at your internship that you're really to do any task and that you're eager to do a task so being willing to write proposals or grant requests or do the grunt work for a project. I'm always impressed by somebody who walks up to a group of people that they don't know and want immediately join in the conversation, the debate, the idea sharing. Don't sit back and watch. Be a good engager, be a good listener and it always stands out above the rest. I was Apparel CAD Designer for Maurice's. It started as a full-time internship over the summer and it actually turned into a job. Especially being fresh out of college, you're not going to be an expert at what you do. So yeah, just being open and willing to learn and being positive, always being positive. It is pretty easy to pick out someone who's really trying to do things to make themself look better versus someone who's doing something because they care about what they're doing. It's that latter one that really stands out for me. That's the key piece and that's the type of person that I want to keep around. We bring our interns in and we are looking to convert them to full time. So some of the things that we're looking for are again, the work ethic, are they showing up on time on a day to day basis. Do they take too long for lunch? Are they reliable? And those people are gonna stand out to us. They're gonna have that positive energy about them. They're gonna want to want to work hard and want to come onboard full-time. And then we will absolutely invest in those people. A hundred percent. Because we feel like that's a win-win at the end of the summer. (light music)