Friday 16 September 2016

Professional skills learnt from Internships!

Benjamin Franklin once said – “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I may remember. Involve me and I learn”. Internships are a great opportunity to learn application of the theory learnt in school and college. It allows you to cultivate some of the crucial skillsets of work-life no books can teach. Here are some professional skills you will develop during an internship.
Formal communication
As a student, you develop your own jargon which is carried forward to your workplace. The work environment is a formal setup. Hence, your language and grammar should be appropriate. An internship is an eye-opener before a job. It teaches you how to convey your point correctly.
Networking
During an internship, you get to know professionals in your area of interest. They could be your colleagues at the office, fellow-interns, vendors, or agencies. Your friends, relatives, and professors are a part of the network too. But the real work lessons can be learnt from a professional set-up. You learn to build long-term relationships.Your network is a valuable learning source. It is an important tool that comes handy throughout your professional life.
Work-ethics
College life makes a student complacent. To have a successful career, you need to inculcate some values like right attitude, hard work, and discipline. When you are marked late, you realize the value of punctuality. When your mentor points out the cut, copy, paste in a weekly report, you know your approach was wrong. As internships offer a glimpse of your working life, you realize the importance of these values and work-ethics.
Balancing work-life
To be truly happy and satisfied in your personal and professional life, you must learn to balance both. As you move up the career ladder and responsibilities increase, personal time becomes dearer. There is an important family function to attend at 6 pm and you have to submit aPowerPoint presentation or a report by 6.30 pm. Situations like these are common in the work place. Only when you face these situations do you learn to manage both aspects of your life.
Valuing deadlines
During college, the deadlines are either those set by the teachers or the ones you think are important. In the workplace, deadlines are set in stone. Project submission deadlines are fixed and cannot be changed. Especially, if the deadline is given by your customer or a third party. If you have delayed finishing your work, your mentor is likely to make you sit through the night to finish it. A forcefully cancelled movie or dinner is all it takes for you to value deadlines.
Problem-solving
At every stage in life, you have to find solutions. But when solving a work problem, you are required to operate with some restrictions. These limitations are company policies, beliefs, and values. They could also be client’s expectations. Internships are an insight into a world of problem-solving within boundaries.
An internship teaches business etiquettes in a real-life situation. The experience gained during an internship gives you confidence about your chosen career. You can set realistic targets based on your learning and choose to specialize further in your area of interest.
This work is produced by Simplus Information Services Pvt Ltd. Customer engagement through content.

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