6 Tips and Tricks to Ace your Virtual Internship
As a student, an internship is a rite of passage. It can set you up to allow you to begin your professional journey, make life-long professional contacts, or even new friends.
To make the most of your virtual internship, we have compiled the essential list of handy tips and tricks to ensure you ace your internship.
1. Ask Questions
After receiving your internship placement, it is important to be as prepared as possible. The best way to do this is to ask questions. Call them what you want, but questions/queries/enquiries are the ideal way to show that you’re engaged and passionate about the role and that you have what it takes to confidently navigate the internship.
Sample questions could include:
- What does a typical day look like?
- What are the preferred methods of communication?
- What are some challenges an intern could expect to encounter during their placement?
2. Write down notes. All the time.
Write (or type) down everything — even if you don’t think it’s valuable.
Note-taking makes it easier to remember information, freeing up your brain to solve real problems. In addition, it also stops you from making mistakes and second-guessing yourself.
There are numerous ways to take notes, with the most ‘effective’ being active note-taking. This style includes:
- looking for connections with ideas
- writing your own explanation of what something means
- creating your own diagrams to better understand concepts
3. Connect, Connect, Connect!
Connections made during your internship can be stepping stones to your next career opportunity. But how does one make and continue connections during a virtual internship?
The answer is no different than if it was an ‘in-person’ internship: you need to reach out to people. In many ways, it is actually easier to connect and speak to someone today, no matter where they are located, because everyone is now extremely well-versed with all the various forms of online communication platforms (Zoom, Skype, Google chat, etc).
4. Create your own home office
Creating and maintaining a separate space dedicated entirely to the professional aspects of your life will ensure that you maintain the essential work/life balance.
Even though a remote internship may have less structured hours, it’s important to continue to dedicate specific hours in the week to complete your internship. Ensure that the space is comfortable, and (maybe most importantly), that it has good lighting — you know you’ll be frequently having video chat meetings!
5. Maintain and Emphasize Communication
Instead of common-place ‘in person’ communication, a virtual internship relies on methods such as chat systems (Slack/Teams/GChat), emails, and calls (both voice and video) in order to get work done.
It is vital to establish, from the beginning of your internship, what the preferred method of communication is, and to understand the best way to utilize it.
If email is the preferred method, ensure that you are consistently emailing them with status updates and questions so nothing slips through the cracks and deadlines are met.
6. Be Patient
A virtual internship comes with its own set of unique challenges and it’s vital to be aware of them and have a set of methods to solve them as they arise.
One of the main causes of contention is time zones. As your coworkers may be on different schedules (and all around the world!), they may not respond straight away, even if it’s a simple yes or no question. In this instance, patience is the key. Asking your coworkers where they are based and what time zones they work in will ensure you’re productive and complete your tasks successfully.
In parting
Even though a Virtual Internship comes with its own set of challenges, it also provides you with solutions for tackling those challenges, and expands and extends your skill-set and employability for the future of work.
An internship can help you learn more about yourself, what projects you love the challenge of and others that you would prefer to avoid in the future. You are now able to target and seek an internship in your dream industry or company, regardless of the location or time zone.
Interested in learning more? Virtual Internships offers 1, 2, 3, or 4-Month placements, in over 4000+ companies all around the world. Contact us today.
