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From Intern To EmployeeTara Weiss,04.27.09, 06:00 PM EDT

Turn that summer job into the start of your career.

In this economy, a recent college graduate's best prospect for landing a full-time job may be turning that summer internship into a

permanent positioin once the summer is over. The trick to achieving that feat: Don't think of it as just a summer gig.

"Treat it as a 10- to 12-week job interview," says Alex Taylor, a vice president of university relations atBank of America(BAC-

news -people ) in Charlotte, N.C.

Since first impressions are important, dress professionally. Arrive on the first day more dressed up than usual. It's a sign of respect and asafety measure--you can never be too dressy, but you can be underdressed. Female interns should wear a skirt or dress that comes to theknee (or just above) or slacks and a top that covers their shoulders. Never wear flip flops, show cleavage or wear anything that's ripped ortorn. Male interns should wear slacks or khakis with a button-down shirt and tie. Take your dressing cues from senior level colleagues afterthe first few days.

In Pictures: From Intern To Employee

Within the first week, make an appointment with your manager to establish goals. Discuss specific skills you hope to gain over the summer

and other projects you'd like to work on. Listen openly to the type of work your managers assign and be enthusiastic.

"Not every task you're going to do is something you'll enjoy, but have the attitude that these are building blocks to your career," says TomMusbach, managing editor of Yahoo! Hot Jobs. "Once you show you can be trusted with small tasks, managers will give you more

responsibility."

That first meeting is also a good time to ask your manager how he or she prefers to communicate. This is particularly useful when you have

questions and when you need to provide project updates. Ask if he or she prefers to talk in-person or via e-mail or instant messenger.

Some managers want interns to wait till the end of the day (when they have several questions gathered), and others don't mind if interns

ask them questions as they come up.

Don't be shy about asking questions, especially if you need clarification on an assignment. No one wants to be a pest, but it's best to get it

right the first time. "Asking smart questions is a positive quality in an employee," says Holly Stroupe, a former Bank of America intern who

was hired full-time as an assistant vice president for leadership development following her internship in 2005. "It helps you understand what

the business is striving toward. It also shows your level of engagement, and that's what employers are looking for. It shows you're

motivated to do well."

Keep a work journal throughout the summer that includes new skills you've learned and completed assignments. "They'll be great building

blocks for your rsum," says Musbach. Also, save any complimentary e-mails or notes to get ideas for potential references.

Doing quality work is just part of your job as an intern. You also have to network. Most companies make this easy by hosting events for

interns throughout the summer. Attend all of them; they're great for mingling with fellow interns, an important group since you're all in the

same field. As your career progresses, they can tell you about job openings at other companies, recommend certain employers and

introduce you to important people in the industry.

Those intern events are also ideal opportunities to meet staffers and higher-ups in other departments. Take an interest in how they got to

where they are and ask what they like about working there. Another good tip for getting to know the full-time staffers: Eat where they eat. If

there's a break room or cafeteria that employees frequent, eat there and introduce yourself. Once you've broken the ice, ask them to join

you for a cup of coffee to get advice on a project you're working on. People generally like to feel like they're experts.

There are plenty of ways to network--and they don't all have to be formal. If the company has a softball team, join it. If everyone goes out

for drinks after work, meet them at the bar. But just have one drink and nurse it throughout the night.

Meeting colleagues in casual settings makes the more formal meetings easier. Sitting in on staff meetings might be intimidating at first, but

once you've been to a few, participate. "Ask questions and contribute ideas," says Betty Smith, manager of university recruiting atHewlett

Packard(HPQ-news -people ). "Ask questions in such a way that's on target and productive for the meeting."
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When it comes to communicating with others inside or outside the company, remember to keep correspondence professional. Incoming

interns are used to text messaging casually. But when composing a business e-mail, use the person's full name and always use proper

capitalization and punctuation. End the note respectfully and don't overuse exclamation points. Also, be sure to only reply to the necessary

person--don't cc the entire company on an e-mail.

Before the summer ends, get your colleagues' contact information and send thank-you notes. Network with them throughout the year by

sending casual e-mails asking how they're doing and what interesting projects they're working on. These people are vital contacts--not only

can they serve as references, they might also recommend you for a job at the company or let you know about positions at other companies.

When it comes to landing a job, it's all about who you know.

The Evolution Of InternsJ. Isaac Spradlin,04.27.09, 04:00 PM EDT

Their roots go back almost a thousand years, but they didn't really exist until the last few decades.

Almost everyone seems to agree that an internship is a valuable part of career development. But if you were in college before the 1980s,

chances are you never did anything called interning. So where did the experience come from, and how did it become such a seeming

necessity for today's future job-seekers?

Experts agree that in the largest sense, internships descend from the professional apprenticeships that originated with the trade guilds of

Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. Master craftsmen and tradesmen took in young learners and gave them menial tasks that make

filing and photocopying look plush. Apprentices served one master for most of their teen years. Then they could graduate to journeyman

and start earning better wages. Often they chose to continue with the same masters.

The 1911 book Labor and Apprenticeship, by Reginald Bray, includes a section that discusses the main objectives of the apprenticeship

system: supervision, training and filling job openings. It sounds a lot like today's internships, but there are key differences.

"The current system has much less structure," says Andrew Wender Cohen, a history professor at Syracuse University. "Apprenticeship

would have gotten you into a guild, or in the early 20th century, would have gotten you into the union," he says. "The concrete benefits of

apprenticeship were more clear and were typically contractually stated."

The guild system eventually gave way to industrialization and the rise of formal professional education. Between the 1890s and 1920s,

fields like medicine began to adapt the practical experience of apprenticeship into training even as that training became more scientific and

lecture-based.

"Social work, engineering, teaching and business all embraced the professional ideal," says Sanford Jacoby, professor and vice chairman

of the University of California, Los Angeles, Anderson School of Management. That ideal, Jacoby adds, "was a combination of academic

and practical knowledge, usually with certification of some sort, internal governance, like a guild, and also an ethos of social responsibility.

There had always been an apprenticeship in medicine, but now it became a standard part of education, an internship."

In the early 20th century, the business-world analog to the internship was the role of messenger boys or copy boy. Cohen points out that

Andrew Carnegie started out that way, as a bobbin boy who changed spools of thread in a textile factory. He used the familiarity he gained

with that particular business to begin to learn how companies worked.

Not until the late 1960s did formal internships as we know them start to appear.

"When I was in school I did an internship," says Victoria Davis, internship director for the human and organizational development

department at Vanderbilt's Peabody College of Education and Human Development. She was an intern in 1986. "But it was still quite

unusual."

As the demand for knowledge workers increased, so did the importance of the internship. "People began using it as a recruiting tool, and

that's what it is now," Davis says. Most recruiting happens, she adds, in the finance, entertainment and health care industries, so that's

where many internships are. She adds that when internships really came in, during the 1980s, they were developed first by business

schools.
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Why just that? "The idea is, the more you get involved with little things, the more you'll be able to get involved with other things," Fedorkosays.

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