Internship lessons

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!

4. The three most important words - Fit, Fit, Fit: Unless you are doing consulting, the three most important things when being selected by a company are - fit, fit, and fit. It took me forever to appreciate this as I was coming from a cultural mindset where the candidate with the best GPA, experience, or talent would get selected. Not true here.

5. Sign up for resume review and mock interview appointments - lots of them: Don't hesitate to sign up for appointments with OCD staff later in the process.

6. Network smart: I spent lots of energy denying the importance of networking. After five months, I finally settled to the fact that in America, it is not the most technically skilled person that gets the job. You need to have strong skills, but above and beyond that you need to have demonstrated interest, let the company know that you are a good fit and they are your top choice.

7. Interest - Know your top three opportunities and demonstrate your interest: For me, it was hard to demonstrate interest in companies that I was casually checking out versus companies that were among my top three to four employers. As one MBA2 said to me, "When I walked out of the interview for company X, they knew that it was my top choice and I had said that to them explicitly several times".

8. Do your homework: Know what makes the company distinctive. Know the philosophy of the company and the executive management team.

9. Keep in touch. It's a very small world. You never know how things will work out: The best advice I got (thanks to the marketing club) was to treat all internships like 12-week job interviews and all internship interviews like a 12-month relationship. So regardless of the decision - offer or not - keep in touch with the potential employers and maintain a strong professional relationship. It's a small world - you never know when the hiring manager of company X might move to company Y.

10. Exploding offers - if you really want something else, consider taking the risk: I faced a situation where I was forced by Amgen to make my final decision two days before my Genentech interview. This agonized me (like most B-School students, I too like having all my choices in hand before picking one!), but in the end I had to make a call. I decided to give up my confirmed offer with Amgen before my final round interviews for Genentech were conducted. For me, this was a very personal decision and was possible because I was a lot more excited about my top choice.