There are many other aspects that define professional preparedness for the workplace. Most of them are common sense. Your task is to reflect on your background and experience and see how many of them you can describe from prior experience. This experience can be from previous employment, volunteer work, student organizations or other campus activities, etc. The point is to help you become articulate in describing a situation that validates that you understand these things as a way of being and behaving. I have listed them on a worksheet for you to document your thoughts for each one. (These were taken from Find Your First Professional Job, Scott Weighart, 2003 and other sources.)
FYI -- Additional Areas of Importance for Success
Email (Much of this was taken from the Drexel University guide)
You will be using email as a mode of professional communication. As you begin your internship you need to use professional writing policies in writing your email messages. Use professional vocabulary and do not use typical student "shorthand" abbreviations such as "u", "ttyl", "lol", etc. Follow the norms of your employer and the culture of the workplace. If it is common to use a text-messaging style, go ahead and use it as long as you are sure the receiver is an appropriate person for this style. Whether you use the standard business formal style or text-message style, use a typical format with greeting, direct, concise content and closing. Be sure the reader will know the purpose of the message and that it is clear what you want the reader to do. Is it just information you are sharing that he/she doesn't need to take any action on? Are you asking for feedback? Are you asking them to do something in line with their job/position? Are you asking them for a business favor? What's the purpose of the message? Email messages should have only one purpose and topic, like a memo. They should be brief, not paragraphs long.
Remember your reader can't hear your tone of voice. Choice of vocabulary is important to help convey your tone and limit use of capitalization to regular grammar rules. You have been "texting" and using email most of your life and probably know that using capital letters in an entire word is "yelling" at the reader. For emphasis it is better to underline.
It may be wise to ask a colleague or co-worker to read your messages at first to be sure they are in keeping with the culture and style of your workplace and the nature of the reader, whom you probably don't know well enough to know how they will "read" your message. If you are preparing a message of a sensitive nature or to be sent to a supervisor or manager, again it would be wise to have a trusted co-worker or your supervisor review it before you send it.
Don't use your email for personal use. It is a tool for conducting business. Likewise, don't send out spam emails or forwarded emails unrelated to your job. Use common sense. If you're considering using email or the Internet for anything that seems questionable, ask your boss if it's okay. If you don't want to ask your boss, than that's a pretty good indication that it was an unacceptable use.
Along with regulating your email and Internet use, keep in mind that as an intern you are expected to use company resources wisely. Remember:
Try this exercise for some practice in preparing business emails.
Telephone (Some of this was taken from the Drexel University guide)
Once again, common sense tells you to use the phone only for business purposes. Personal calls should be done on your own time using your cell phone or a public phone. Most employers are very accommodating and understanding about employees using the business phone for the occasional personal call. "Occasional" does not mean daily, it means maybe once a week or so. Best plan is to use a public phone if you don't have a cell phone and to always make personal calls on your own time at lunch or breaks.
Here are additional "common sense" tips:
§ If someone calls you, let them end the call when they are satisfied with the information you have provided
§ Always announce yourself professionally (Ex., "This is Joanne Williams in the Credit Dept" or "This is Tom Scott at Innovative Designs") Follow the guidelines and training provided by your employer
§ Don't eat or chew gum while receiving or placing a call
§ Don't keep people on hold for a long time - 30 seconds to a minute should be the maximum (when you return to the caller, apologize for the wait, no matter how long or short)
It is up to you to be able to communicate to the employer in the selection process that you understand office procedures are important and are unique to each organization. They need to feel confident that you know to abide by them particularly related to electronic equipment and systems.
While you may feel that this is a pretty simple thing, I encourage you to practice your professional phone answering skills with a friend.
Observe Office Customs and Organizational Dynamics
There are unspoken ways of interacting and behaving, rules of the organization and culture. For the first couple of weeks especially and throughout your internship, observe how people interact and behave in certain circumstances. Learn the customs of the office. What are the unspoken rules? Whatever they are, it is important that you respect them and accept them. Some may seem silly or even counter productive, but you are not in a position to be making changes. You can talk them over with your supervisor in an effort to understand them and perhaps learn some history and background that established the customs. They are present in every employment environment. Discovering and adjusting to them in your internship is important to realizing them in your career employment environment.
Power is central to organizational dynamics. Position is not the only indicator of power. You will sense from the relationships in the organization who the "people of power" are. The "power" these people have is influence. These people have this influential power because it is given to them by others, perhaps the whole group. It is usually not a negative thing, but helps in getting things done. Again, respect this culture and the dynamics of the organization in which you are a guest.
Be Respectful
It should go without saying that you need to be respectful of all people and property at your workplace. Respect for yourself, your co-workers and your supervisor will carry you into opportunities you would not expect. When people know they can trust you to behave in a respectful manner, they are not afraid to invite you into meetings and conversations that you otherwise would not know happened or in which you would not be invited to attend. These opportunities help you to grow into a professional. How others regard you helps you become a professional.
Respect is shown most immediately in how you carry on a conversation: In how you listen, in your tone of voice, in your vocabulary, your posture, and your countenance. Your countenance includes your facial expressions, your gestures and your dress. You show respect further by how you interact with people throughout your work and how you support and encourage others in their work.
Your Performance Matters (Some is taken from Find Your First Professional Job, Scott Weighart, 2003)
You might be "just" an intern, but your presence at your workplace should be a very positive factor in the productivity of the office or organization. You have expectations of what you want to learn from your internship and your employer has expectations of your productivity and performance at the workplace. You have a great deal at stake. Not only the grade you earn for your internship, but much more than that, you have the workplace network and the perception of your employer on how well you are likely to transition into your career field. These factors weigh heavily on your ability to leverage your internship into your future career, with this employer or somewhere else.
Regular conversations with your supervisor will help guide your performance to higher levels of professional standards and a better understanding of what professional standards are in your career field. These conversations can also help you stay on track to fulfilling your Learning Objectives of the internship and can develop a relationship with your supervisor that can open unexpected doors of opportunity. You want your work and your positive influence and presence in the workplace to make them wish you weren't leaving when your internship is over.
It will be both your performance and your positive presence that is the foundation for the strength of the professional reference that you will want at the close of your internship.