Students come back from internships with one of two things: a set of examples they can talk about for years, or a certificate and a vague memory of being in an office.
Which one you get depends far less on the size of the organisation than on whether anyone there had a reason to want you. That is knowable in advance, from questions you can ask before accepting.
Four questions to ask before you accept
The first is the most informative question available to you, and almost nobody asks it: what did the last intern do? It is polite, it is easy to answer, and the answer is diagnostic. A specific answer — they rebuilt this, they handled that — describes a place with a use for interns. A vague one describes a place that takes them because it is asked to. Both are honest answers; only one tells you to accept.
Second: who would I report to? An intern attached to a named person with a stake in their output gets work, feedback and attention; an intern attached to a department gets whatever is left over. If nobody can name the person, that is the answer — the placement has not been thought about, and you would spend the first fortnight looking for something to do.
Third and fourth: what would I produce, and what are the hours, dates and money? Many internships here are unpaid, and that is not in itself a reason to refuse one — but whether transport or lunch is covered, what the hours are, and how long the placement runs should be settled before you start, not in week three. An organisation that answers directly is one that will be straightforward about other things too.
| Ask before accepting | A good sign | A warning |
|---|---|---|
| What did the last intern do? | A specific project | “General support” |
| Who would I report to? | A named person | “The department” |
| What would I produce? | Something with a deliverable | “You'll learn a lot” |
| Are the hours and dates fixed? | Stated plainly | Left vague until you start |
| Is anything paid or reimbursed? | Answered directly | Deflected |
One more selection principle sits above the questions: apply where there is work, not where there is prestige. Large well-known organisations run structured programmes that are heavily oversubscribed, and the intern who is one of forty is easy to leave unattended. A smaller organisation that is genuinely short-handed will hand you real work in the first week because there is nobody else to hand it to. The name on the certificate matters far less than the sentence you can write about what you did — and the sentence is easier to earn where the work is real.
While you are there
Volunteer for the thing nobody wants. Every workplace has a task everyone avoids — a records mess, a backlog, a report nobody has updated in a year — and interns are usually kept away from it in favour of something safer. Ask for it. It is unglamorous, it is finishable within a placement, and it is the one piece of work whose completion is immediately visible to everyone. It is also, in our experience, the single most reliable route from intern to a phone call when a role opens.
Record it as you go: one line a week — what you did, for whom, what changed. A placement is short and the details fade fast; without the record an internship becomes a date range on a CV, which is worth roughly nothing, while with it you hold three or four things you can describe in detail, which is what an interviewer is actually listening for.
And leave with a person, not just a certificate. Certificates confirm attendance; a supervisor who can describe your work specifically is a reference you can use for years, and the difference between the two is a conversation in your final week. Ask whether they would be willing to act as a referee, thank them properly, and stay reachable. Nearly every early-career opportunity that comes through a person rather than an advert starts here.
