Reaching Out Beyond Your Internship
If you are interning at a small company, you meet and know everyone pretty quickly. It can almost feel like you’re trapped in a bubble. At least that is the case for me.
If this is the case – don’t feel trapped! Go and try to meet other people in your industry around the city. There are a few ways to do this:
1) Ask the people you are working with if they know anyone they could introduce you to. Often they will be willing to provide you with more opportunities beyond just their office.
2) Reach out yourself. Research companies in the area that you are interested in and email them. By saying that you are a student and you are spending the summer interning and learning, they often will agree to meet with you. Keep your meetings short, 10 to 15 minutes to respect their time. Also remember to send a thank you card afterwards!
3) Go to events and introduce yourself! You never know who you will meet at events so go put yourself out there and see what is going on. Be open minded and friendly and you can meet a lot of people.
It’s important to begin meeting people so you can start forming your network. You never know when you might want to reach out to one of the people you met when you were interning. A lot of professionals in the industry are happy to meet with students and people just starting out as well because they were there one day.
I have begun doing this myself and I have four meetings lined up for Friday! So you never know what kind of response you will get! My next challenge for myself is to go to more events, it’s easy to send an email but a bit harder to go someplace by yourself.