By Reeva Bohra
It is not what you expect, interning at a startup. Something to know before beginning an internship at a startup is that it will be very different from the traditional structured internship. You wear way more hats than your job description entails. You will be asked to do several tasks, some you know of and some you will be expected to figure out. Your project itself could change in a matter of a day as the startup culture is very fast moving. I worked at Desai Accelerator over the summer, where I got to work for 5 different startups in different industries from carbon climate to e-commerce SaaS.
Being Proactive
To succeed, you have to be proactive. Don’t expect someone to give you work or train you completely. These companies usually don’t have the resources to manage interns and need interns that reduce their workload rather than increase the process of training and explaining. An advice to get more tasks is to do your homework before your manager assigns you something. For example, if you want to work on some project, learn the basics of the skill during the weekend so that you are prepared to tackle that task before work.
Learning Mindset
Your scope of work is not limited to the job description. If you want to excel and learn, then you need to be ready to perform tasks that are not required by your role. As a business intern, I was supposed to work on marketing and finance but I went outside my skills and learned figma and worked on design projects as well. This helped me work on the entire social media campaign on my own as well helped me gain a skill I would not have otherwise learned.
Networking
Usually your internship would not have a formal mentorship structure like larger companies. However, if you work at a small growing startup, the teams are usually small giving you the opportunity to to interact with the CEO or people in high position. You should take advantage of that opportunity to build connections, even if you don’t intend to return to the company. These people usually know other startup founders, which can help you build a stronger network. Working closely with them can help you find mentorship with much more experienced people than a larger corporation where your mentorship is limited to your immediate managers. To network and build these relationships, ask for coffee chats, get to know about their career paths, have an agenda before you network to ensure you are not wasting their and your time.
Your time at a startup exposes you to different industries and responsibilities. It is the ideal internship to understand your work ethic, your likings and your preferred industries. Since you work on several things at once, you can narrow down your passion and interests which could help you recruit in the future. This kind of experience cannot be achieved through classes. It will be daunting at first to work in an unstructured environment but will teach you how to hold yourself accountable. You will have more creativity and say in your work than ever. Lastly, it is important to know that you need to work way more but after the end of your internship you will learn way more than you would have expected.