Communications of the ACM
Befriend the Intern to Fire p Your Career
Blogger Penelope Trunk highlights four ways you can fire up your career by paying close attention to the people with the least work experience. As she points out, there's a lot you can learn about advancing your IT career from the office intern. Interns are the gatekeepers to the "good stuff" within an organization, and can open your eyes to how you can repurpose this "good stuff" in all sorts of creative ways to promote your career. In addition, they can help you find and address weak spots in your background.
Savvy workers understand that interns often know about projects and initiatives that may not yet be high profile within an organization. Especially if they are interning for powerful managers or executives, they can provide a glimpse of the ideas and approaches that their bosses are using or experimenting with. Also, since interns chat about things that really matter to them, they can help you generate new ideas. They can point out trends happening around the country or tell you about the expectations and aspirations of their peer group. They can also suggest great ways to repurpose content using creative methods that you might not have considered.
By letting an intern show you your weak spot, you'll be ready to face anyone else in the organization. You can use this information to craft better responses to questions about your work and adjust the way others perceive you. One way to do all this effectively is to imagine that you will need to get a job from your intern one day. At some point, the intern could be part of the network that will help connect you to a new position. Interns will get big jobs one day, and they will remember each person who saw them for who they are and who they could be.
From Brazen Careerist
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