The internship is a valuable learning opportunity for any business student. In fact, they can make-or-break a job candidate’s shot at breaking into a new industry or target company. That’s why it is so it’s also useful to learn from others’ internship experiences so you don’t make the same mistakes.
Kimberly A. Whitler, a contributor at Forbes, recently spoke to MBA interns about what common mistakes they have made and how they can be avoided.
Expectation Versus Reality
Having clear communication with your manager is key to you landing a full-time position and learning as much as you can.
Mike Burke of University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business interned in the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry as an MBA student. He tells Forbes that his biggest mistake was not having a clear understanding of what his manager’s expectations were. Burke says interns should dedicate at least half an hour a week with their manager to ensure expectations are being met.
“Type up notes directly after those meetings and send an email to your manager ensuring you have complete understanding of what was said,” Burke tells Forbes. “If feasible, set a goal of having your final presentation or project complete two weeks before its due date so that you have ample time to incorporate feedback and course-correct.”
Once you get feedback, it’s best to be open to given advice. Business Insider reports that taking criticism personally is one of the top mistakes interns can make.
“Don’t tolerate bullying or disrespect but do grow a thick skin,” Kerry Schofield, a psychologist and the chief psychometrics officer at professional assessment and self-improvement platform Good.Co, tells Business Insider. “That way you’ll learn from your mistakes instead of repeating them.”
Collaborate with Fellow Interns
On top of working with your manager, it’s also crucial to build relationships with your fellow interns. Kelly McHugh Chtcheprov of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business interned in the tech industry and tells Forbes that connecting with her fellow interns allowed for more opportunities.
“This cohort not only creates a safe space to ask basic questions, but also allows you to find overlaps and opportunities to connect your projects, as was the case for me,” she tells Business Insider. “In addition to improving the quality of your work, leveraging your cohort demonstrates to your manager that you have the skills and the mindset to be a great team member as a full time hire.”
Asking Good Questions
One of the best things an intern can do is ask questions. Mark DesMeules of SC Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University tells Forbes that the first week of an internship is a golden opportunity and critical moment to ask good questions.
“Asking smart questions will help you both stand out and succeed,” he tells Forbes. “While asking questions shouldn’t be limited to your first week, challenges down the road can be mitigated if you work to gain a strong understanding of your summer assignment early on.”
Kristy Posocco is the deputy director of the Career Development Office at the Yale School of Management. In an interview with Top MBA, Posocco says it’s important for interns to seek input and feedback by asking questions. “It’s incumbent upon the intern to ask for and capture feedback that can be critical to a successful project,” Posocco tells Top MBA.
Posocco also stresses the first few weeks of the internship as a critical moment to ask questions and seek feedback. “Leaving questions till the end of an internship can lead to negative feedback on things you could have fixed early on,” she says.
An internship is the foundation to a strong career. More than simply a resume builder, internships can serve as learning opportunities. It’s best to learn from other’s mistakes rather than repeating them on your own.
Sources: Forbes, Business Insider, Top MBA
Reapplying To Business School
A rejection letter is the last thing any applicant wants to see. Once you get that rejection letter in hand and the reality starts to sink in, the next step is to figure whether or not you’ll reapply or move on.
Stacy Blackman, a contributor at U.S. News & World Report, recently discussed whether or not it makes sense to reapply to a school that has already rejected you.
Addressing Weaknesses
It’s difficult to determine why a school has rejected you. There are strategies to building upon your rejection, however. After a rejection, Blackman suggests candidates first review their application to determine what exactly their weaknesses are. The most common reasons for rejection, Blackman says, are low test scores, insufficient leadership experience, weak recommendations and poor essays.
“You can improve some things in your profile, such as test scores and work experience, but you cannot change or improve upon other factors, such as a low college GPA or being out of school for 15 years,” Blackman writes. “If you simply need more time to flesh out your goals or take on more responsibilities at work to show additional examples of leadership or teamwork, then a second attempt may make sense.”
Recommendation letters are more out of your control. Blackman says applicants can convey what they want highlighted in a letter.
“Make sure whomever you ask is willing to write a very compelling recommendation for you,” Blackman writes. “Since it’s not a given that you’ll see the letter once it’s written, it’s perfectly OK to come right out and explicitly ask for what you need.”
To ensure your recommendation letters are strong, it’s important to clearly communicate specific experiences of your leadership abilities. It’s your job as an applicant to provide these to your recommender. “Writing a strong endorsement requires some effort, so make it easy for your recommender by providing a list of the accomplishments you want to highlight,” Blackman writes.
Improving for the Interview
Interviews are a difficult aspect of the application, because they often required being put on the spot. While Blackman says it’s completely normal to be nervous and mess up, it’s important to follow up on where you were weak during the interview.
“While you’ll never know for sure if you tanked the interview the first time around, the best way to prevail next time is through prep, prep and more prep,” Blackman writes.
Knowing what you want to convey is crucial, but it’s just as important to know what questions you want to ask as well. This demonstrates interest, but also connects you more with the interviewer.
“Your interaction with the interviewer speaks volumes about what kind of teammate you will be when you’re in the program, so make sure you send the right message loud and clear,” Blackman writes.
Writing a Stronger, More Personal Essay
One of the biggest mistakes an applicant can make when writing a personal essay is to make it impersonal. Blackman says tailoring an MBA essay to illustrate a “perfect MBA applicant” completely misses the point of a personal essay.
“Your goal is to show what an introspective and interesting candidate you are,” Blackman writes. “While many applicants have similar credentials, the beauty of the MBA application process is that it allows candidates a chance for self-reflection and to discover that they are more unique than they first imagine.”
Demonstrate Improvement
Most important to reapplying, Blackman says, is demonstrating a significant sense of improvement in your candidacy. Logistically, Blackman recommends that applicants plan to reapply in round one of the next admissions cycle. Without understanding where you need improvement, it’s impossible to build a stronger reason for why a school should accept you.
“It may be hard to hear, but there is a reason why the business schools rejected you the first time,” Blackman writes. “You need to understand those reasons and decide whether you can address them. If you can’t, then reapplying to those schools does not make sense.”
HBS students at graduation
New Study: Few Black Female Harvard MBAs Reach Top Corporate Roles
Corporate America is actually getting less diverse when it comes to African Americans in leadership roles.
New research by the Harvard Business Review finds that only 12.6% of African American women who graduated from HBS went on to attain CEO or executive positions at corporations. Compare that to the 40% of non-African American Harvard MBAs who went on to executive corporate ranks, according to The Washington Post.
“This group is very highly credentialed, and given those particular assumptions, they should rise at the same level,” Anthony Mayo, a co-author and professor at Harvard Business School, tells The Washington Post. “There is not an indication there is a drop-off in desire.”
The research studied the careers of 2,300 HBS alumni of African descent who graduated since 1908—the founding year of the African-American Student Union at Harvard Business School. Among the group, the study focused on 532 African American women who graduated between 1977 and 2015.
Visibility/Invisibility Conundrum
The study cites an idea of visibility/invisibility conundrum as one of the biggest challenges faced by women studied in the research.
On one hand, African-American women have a unique benefit to their hypervisibility since, more often than not, they are the only black person at a firm.
“There are so many rooms I’ve gone into in my life where I was the only black person, and I immediately started to see that as an advantage,” the vice chair of an investment firm said in the study. “Because they’re going to look, they’re going to listen….They’re wondering how I got into the room, so I have an opportunity to get their attention. All I have to do is deliver into that space.”
On the other hand, according to the study, there is also a sense of invisibility that comes with that. Many of those interviewed by Harvard Business Review report awkward scenarios where they are often mistaken for secretaries or members of the wait staff.
“Navigating between the extremes of hypervisibility and invisibility can feel traumatic,” the study reads. “One is either performing under a microscope or being ignored, and self-esteem can take a hit in either scenario. Having built the capacity for resilience, however, the women we studied were consistently able to maneuver around this paradox, often turning the obstacles it posed into opportunities.”
Failure to Provide Equal Opportunities for Growth
The study alludes to a bigger, more organizational issue at hand: the failure for a workplace organization to provide equal opportunities for growth. For the minority of African American women who have reached top ranks in their organization, the authors say, it requires an “extraordinary ability, perseverance, and support to transcend it.”
“The insights gleaned in our study are important not just for African-Americans and women,” the authors write. “They’re essential for any manager who recognizes what research has shown over and over again—that an organization’s diversity is its strength.”
Sources: Harvard Business Review, The Washington Post
Changing Your Mindset About Networking
Networking is an essential reality of the business world. However, according to Herminia Ibarra, an economist and professor at London Business School, networking is more than simply a skill. It’s a mindset.
In an article for the Harvard Business Review, Ibarra covers common misconceptions that surround networking.
“In my 20 years of teaching about how to build and use networks more effectively, I have found that the biggest barriers people typically face are not a matter of skill but mind-set,” Ibarra writes.
People Aren’t Born Naturally-Gifted at Networking
One misconception regarding networking, according to Ibarra, is that people are naturally gifted at networking. Rather, Ibarra says, if networking is a skill, anyone can improve on it.
Ibarra highlights the idea of people with “fixed” theories and people with “growth mindsets.” The latter of the two have the mindset that networking can be developed over time.
“If you believe that networking is a skill you can develop you are more likely to be motivated to improve it, work at it harder at it, and get better returns for your networking than someone with a fixed mind-set,” Ibarra writes.
“Natural” Relationships Form Homogenous Networks
The misconception that relationships should form naturally, Ibarra argues, is that when it comes to networking, there needs to be diversity.
If people networked and formed relationships “naturally,” Ibarra argues, “it’d create networks that are “neither useful to you nor useful to your contacts because they are too homogenous.”
In a Fast Company article, contributor Allison Jones highlights that to network well, individuals need to overcome the belief that networking must be organic. She further stresses the importance in growing and changing a network as you yourself grow and change. The only way to grow and change, Jones says, is to be deliberate.
“Heading to a conference? See who else will be there, schedule a time and place to meet, and think a bit about what you’d love to talk about,” Jones suggests in her article. “Love informational interviews? How often will you do them so you continue to make meaningful connections and grow in your career? What your networking looks like depends on your commitments, but it’s key to be deliberate about trying.”
Inner Circle vs. Outer Circle Network
Ibarra makes an important distinction between what we consider our inner circle of contacts and outer circle.
The inner circle, Ibarra says, consists of “close, high trust” relationships with people who know us well. The outer circle is the opposite – people we don’t know well yet or don’t see often.
A common misconception regarding networking is that our inner circle is more valuable than the outer. However, Ibarra argues the opposite.
“The problem with our trusted advisers and circle of usual suspects is not that they don’t want to help,” she writes. “It’s that they are likely to have the same information and perspective that we do.”
Ibarra cites research that shows weaker ties in our network actually allow for more “innovation and strategic flow.” It’s in this way, Ibarra argues, that we learn new things and connect to “far-flung information and resources.”
Networking can allow for more diverse connections and innovative ideas. The only way for that to happen, however, is to change your mindset about it.
“The only way you will come to understand that networking is one of the most important resources for your job and career is try it, and discover the value for yourself,” Ibarra writes.
Sources: Harvard Business Review, Fast Company
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