Spring is coming up quickly, and lots of young people are gearing up for applications, interviews, and—hopefully—the coveted spring internship. Some of these internships will provide genuinely great learning experiences: you’ll get to see the inner-workings of an organization, and you’ll be more prepared for similar work later in your life. Of course, some of these internships aren’t valued just for the learning opportunities they provide. Instead, many young people will pursue these internships and achievements simply to pad their resumes—perhaps en route to their next internship, or even toward an eventual job.
I’m not going to completely denounce resume-padding or pretend that I’ve never been drawn by its allure (taking on a lot of commitments—not lying, which is different). In a competitive economy, young people need any edge they can get, and having a noteworthy name on your resume can count for quite some bit. Still, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about building your resume, and going about it the right way will serve you much better in the future.
Do: Focus on intrinsic reasons for doing things rather than extrinsic ones.
Intrinsic motivation is about doing things because you want to do them—say, because you find them enjoyable, or because you consider them to be a part of an important cause. For example, interning with your local Representative because you find politics to be genuinely exciting could be an instance of intrinsic motivation. The same internship, however, could be motivated by extrinsic reasons—ones driven by factors outside of yourself—if you were taking the position merely for its prestige or to be able to list it on a resume.
Why is choosing activities based on intrinsic reasons so important? Well, for one, you’ll enjoy the process a lot more if you want to be involved, rather than seeing it as a necessary burden to achieve some other valuable thing. The same excitement and energy of a Congressional office could easily turn into chaos and exhaustion if you don’t really care about the work.
Not only are you more likely to enjoy your work if you do it for intrinsic reasons, but you’ll also probably be more successful at it. When people are motivated by extrinsic reasons, they often stop short in their activities once the goal has been achieved. For instance, if you only want to be a marketing intern so that you can claim experience in the field, you’re going to feel satisfied with your objective far earlier than someone who’s in the position to learn—and consequently, they’re going to develop much more skill than you are.
Now, I know that this might sound like an extrinsic reason to choose your work based on intrinsic reasons, but it’s just true: Potential employers can tell when you are passionate about your work and when there’s a lot of depth beneath the surface. You aren’t going to be able to glide through opportunities that you don’t care about for very long before it becomes apparent to other people. If you choose opportunities based on what you enjoy, on the other hand, you won’t have to feign interest, and you’ll likely get further. It seems like a win-win situation.
Don’t: Sign-up for small commitments to “pad” your resume.
This has always struck me as one of the odder resume-padding habits: when people accumulate a series of small activities and string them together as things they’ve done, all without a cohesive frame or narrative. Unfortunately for them, the resume is just as much about who you are and what your interests are as it is about what you have done.
Put in simpler terms, a list of small achievements is going to read as exactly that: a list of small achievements. A more carefully-chosen description of accomplishments, however, can give employers a sense of what matters to you and why you have chosen certain commitments. For example, volunteering once on Election Day at a polling station is unlikely to show much dedication to the civic process: it’s only one day’s work. On the other hand, a longer-term effort (say, organizing, rounding up, and training all the volunteers for that day, in addition to other campaign work) paints a much fuller picture of who you are. When focusing on your resume, therefore, it makes sense to think in terms of the big picture, rather than a few small, isolated activities.
Do: Explore what learning opportunities exist within your options.
A cool internship is useful on your resume as a signaling mechanism to future employers that you were deemed qualified by someone else, and if the internship is noteworthy enough it might even land you an interview. From there, though, the process of selling yourself changes quite a bit. It’s no longer about piquing somebody’s interest; instead, it’s about adding depth to the picture and talking about the tangible skills you picked up in the process.
It’s no secret that some internships are regarded as glorified busywork. The Internet is full of stories about interns who spend all day fetching coffee or doing basic grunt-work that doesn’t teach them much about their field. Of course, this experience might be better than nothing, and it can sometimes launch bigger and better opportunities. Still, as a recent article in The Washingtonian pointed out, young people can no longer count on these internships to land them stable employment. Now that you quite likely won’t leave an internship with a job offer, it’s important to leave with something else: hands-on learning, and improved future prospects.
So, how can you go about gauging opportunities for learning in certain activities? For starters, you should be asking your interviewer questions about what your role in the organization would be and how you would be expected to contribute. This can come across as a bit assertive, and it’s probably best to not lead off the interview with these questions, but it’s important to treat interviews as a bit of a two-way process. The organization is trying to determine whether it wants to bring you on-board, but you should also be considering whether it fits your needs. Another good method is to talk with friends who have worked in similar situations previously. Ask them if they would make the same decisions if they could start over again; ask them what the biggest thing they learned in the role was. There’s little harm in gathering information.
Some of the time you’ll be in a tight position where you have to accept whatever is offered to you, but if you’re fortunate enough to have some flexibility, really consider how you’re going to come out better on the other end.
Don’t: Lie about your past experiences or skills.
I know this might sound simple, but you would be surprised by how many stories I’ve heard of people who feign expertise in certain areas and then get caught in lies during interviews or resume submission. Worse, some of them actually land the opportunities and then find themselves completely overwhelmed with tasks they claimed to be able to complete. Inflating your resume is just a bad idea; even if you don’t get caught directly, the negative impacts are going to catch up with you, and it’s not going to be pretty.
With that said, if you find yourself without certain core skills or experiences, there are ways to improve on those deficits without lying. For example, if you want a hands-on look at a marketing campaign, consider volunteering your time with a small local organization that’s a little understaffed. Perhaps it’s not quite as prestigious as a bigger-name company or a widely-sought internship, but it will show your commitment to your passions—and better yet, you’ll leave the opportunity better prepared for the future. If you lie, however, you might initially come off as impressive, but you won’t have the actual skills to back up your claims. And that shortage is going to catch up with you.
With these tips in mind, hopefully you’re more prepared to choose what to include when selling yourself and to position yourself for the opportunities you want. Of course, remember that what you do in the position is almost more important than the position itself—and that’s why intrinsic motivation and genuine interest matter so much. It can be tempting to give in to big-name offers, and some of the time those internships can be quite useful, but it’s important to take them for the right reason. If your decision is influenced heavily by prestige or some other extrinsic factor, you’ll likely be left unsatisfied with the work, and your job experience will suffer as a consequence.
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