Internships are professional learning experiences that provide meaningful and practical work exposure related to a candidate’s educational study background or career interest. Various organisations provide the best internship program opportunities to candidates. Internships offer employers the opportunity to bring new ideas and energy to the table, develop the raw talent and eventually build a pipeline for future employees.
Making a career decision at the start of your career could be complex and confusing as you lack the experience and maturity to make the right decision. Then what is the way out of this?
Well, the first and foremost step here would be self-assessment. Once you get a clear understanding of what you want to do, or, rather, being more clear about what you don’t want to land into, will help you fetch the most suitable internship opportunity for yourself. Here are a few self-analysation aspects that can help you get closer to your desired work and employment opportunity.
1. Are you unqualified?
Before applying for any professional experience, one should always check whether the educational background and choice of career are aligned with the internship profile or not. For example, an accounting background can work great for opportunities in accounting internship programmes. On the other hand, if you have an engineering background and you apply for an internship in the field of HR, it could end up in a disaster.
2. Assess your weaknesses and strengths
Strengths are the skills to preserve and apply for an advantage at work, while weaknesses are the areas of improvement in the workplace. For positive and growth-oriented results on the job, employees need to give in their best efforts and thrive for results. And for this, the strengths and weaknesses determine who you are and in what conditions you are comfortable and productive.
3. What are your interests?
Apart from the degree and educational background, certain areas or job roles interest you and encourage you for productive results. These interest areas charge you with great enthusiasm for achievements. Mingling your job with your passion is the best combination of unparalleled job satisfaction and self-accomplishment. Sometimes, these interest areas might be too different from your study background but can bring incredible opportunities your way.
4. Be clear about what you want to learn.
A candidate should always be clear regarding the motive of undergoing any learning. He must define his learning objectives of pursuing any kind of training at the initial level only. This will help him stay aligned with the growth and knowledge enhancement pattern during the entire course of the internship period.
5. Analyse your work values
A clear understanding of what matters to you is crucial for an encouraging work environment. Your work values play an essential role in determining what your priorities are in the workplace. Before landing an internship, one should evaluate one’s work values for better and enhanced productivity.
6. Evaluate your knowledge and the position’s expectations.
The following critical evaluation for a suitable professional internship opportunity is the assessment of your existing knowledge with the expectation of the internship position you are applying for. For example, suppose you have an educational background in marketing, and you eventually land up applying for business internships. In that case, you are in a win-win situation for the same.
There is a pool of opportunities in the job market that can make you feel complex and lost and may misguide you from your actual goals. Therefore, before stepping into any place, every candidate should explore themselves as much as possible to explore the best opportunity for themselves.
