How to plan, run and measure a business internship properly

An internship is a short project with a deliverable, and the deliverable is not the work you do for the employer. It is what you leave with: a decision about the field, a body of evidence about your own work, and one or two people who will speak for you.

Treated that way, an internship can be planned, run and measured like any other project. Most are not, which is why so many produce nothing but a line on a resume.

What to take away

Planning: what is this for?

An internship can produce four things, and it rarely produces all four. Choose.

A decision. You are not sure whether this kind of work suits you, and a few months inside will tell you. If this is the goal, the employer's prestige matters less than how close to the real work you will be placed.

A return offer. You want a job here afterwards. Then the goal is to be the person they cannot imagine not hiring, which means being useful to a specific team on a specific problem, and being visible to whoever decides.

Evidence. You want a portfolio of things you did that you can describe in detail to the next employer. Then the goal is ownership of something with a beginning, a middle and an end, however small, rather than assisting on many things.

People. You want two or three relationships that outlast the placement. Then the goal is to work closely with a small number of people rather than to meet everyone.

Write the choice down. When the placement drifts, and it will, the note is what you steer back toward.

Planning: paid, unpaid and what the rules are

Whether an internship must be paid depends on where you are, what you do, and for whom. In many jurisdictions, an unpaid placement at a commercial employer is lawful only if it meets a test about who is the primary beneficiary.

In the United States, the Department of Labor publishes a fact sheet setting out the test it applies to internships at for-profit employers. It is Fact Sheet #71, Internship Programs Under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Read the fact sheet itself for the criteria. Other countries have an equivalent through their labor ministry or employment authority.

Where a placement is paid, the ordinary wage rules apply to it as they do to anyone else, including the overtime requirements for a worker who is not exempt. This site does not state what the test requires or what an internship should pay, because the rules differ by place and change over time.

Two practical points do hold everywhere. First, an arrangement in which you are doing the work a paid employee would otherwise do, for no pay, deserves a careful look. Second, the question of whether a placement is lawful is separate from whether it is worth doing, and you should ask both.

Execution: the first week

The first week sets what kind of intern you will be, because the people around you form a view quickly and rarely revise it. Five things to do before it ends.

Execution: getting real work

The commonest failure is a placement made of observation. Shadowing, attending meetings, being shown things. It feels like learning and produces nothing you can describe later.

Real work has three properties: somebody needed it, it had a deadline, and your absence would have changed the outcome. You will not always be offered such work.

Ask for it directly: is there something the team has meant to do but lacked time for? There always is, and it usually makes the ideal intern project because it matters and no one else will do it.

When you get it, treat it as a delivery. Agree what done looks like, check in before the halfway point, and hand over something the team can use after you leave. The handover is where interns are remembered.

For instance: a team builds a weekly sales summary by hand from three spreadsheets, and nobody has time to fix it. You take it on. Done means the summary comes from one source, matches the numbers the team already publishes, and needs no manual copying.

The handover is a one-page note on how to run it, plus a short session with whoever owns it after you leave.

Measurement: the weekly record

Every week, in a private note, write down:

This takes minutes and it is the whole difference between an internship you can describe and one you cannot. By the last week it becomes raw material for your resume lines, your interview stories and your own decision about the field.

Without it, you will remember a general impression and no specifics. Specifics are what the next employer asks for.

Measurement: the exit

The last fortnight is not a wind-down. Three conversations to have before you go. Book the manager conversation for your final week, and ask for it at least three days ahead. Book the hiring conversation for the week before that, while decisions can still change.

With your manager: what did I do well, what would you have wanted done differently, and would you hire me. Ask the last one plainly. The answer, and how it is given, tells you where you stand.

For the manager conversation, a phrasing that works: I would like to come back. Is there a role for me here, and what would you need to see from me before you decide?

With whoever decides about hiring: whether there is a role, and if not now, when the next intake is and whether you should apply.

For the hiring conversation, a phrasing that works: I would like to work here after this placement. Is there a role on your team, and if not this cycle, when should I apply?

With yourself: go back to the note you wrote before the first day. Did the placement produce the thing you chose? If it produced something else, what? That is the decision the whole exercise was for.

How this connects to what comes next

An internship is a compressed version of the early stages of whichever function it sits in. The way work is credited in operations, where success is invisible, and in business development, where it is loudly visible, will show up during a placement in those functions and is worth recognizing when it does.

A placement in administration is the fastest way to see how an organization actually makes decisions. And a placement under a good manager will teach you more about whether you want to manage than any description of the job can.

Read all of this against the goal you chose at the start. If you chose a decision, the function matters less than how close to real work you sit. If you chose a return offer, the team and the manager matter more than the function's reputation.

If you chose evidence, ask what you will own by the end. If you chose people, ask who you will work with daily. The placement answers those questions, not the label on it.

Common questions

Is a placement at a well-known employer worth more than a better one at an unknown employer?

For a return offer at that employer, yes. For evidence and a decision about the field, usually no. The name opens a door once; what you did is what you talk about in every interview after that.

What if I am only given observation and admin?

Ask for one owned piece of work, in the form suggested above. If it is refused, do the observation well, keep the record anyway, and treat the decision about the field as the deliverable. Then say so, tactfully, in the exit conversation.

Should I take an unpaid internship?

Check first whether it is lawful where you are, using the authority named above. Then ask what it produces for you against what it costs you. Some unpaid placements are worth it; many exist because nobody has asked the first question.

How do I turn the internship into a job offer?

Be useful to a specific team on a specific problem, be visible to the person who decides, and ask directly before you leave. Interns who assume an offer will arrive unprompted are often disappointed, not because the work was poor but because nobody raised it.

Does it matter which function the internship is in?

Less than people think for a first placement. What matters is being close to real work and having something to show for it. The function can be chosen with more care once you know what you are choosing between.