The internship process is very important in terms of seeing how the education you received at university is applied in practice and what working life is like.

Importance

We can define the purpose of an internship as preparing for work. We can call it baby steps prepared before jumping into a job from scratch. The more solidly you take your first steps, the faster your learning to walk speed will increase. The internship period is the preparation process before jumping into work. As a result of the internship process, answering questions like the following, rather than the technical knowledge you've gained, will be more beneficial in planning your future:

  • How should communication be?
  • What kind of questions should I ask?
  • How should I evaluate the answer received?
  • How should I ensure harmony in teamwork?
  • How should I mentally prepare for work?
  • How can I maintain continuous learning?
  • How can I maintain work discipline?

Of course, the answers to these questions won't come automatically during the internship process. Being as active as possible and asking your questions during the internship process is very important. I recommend researching the culture of asking questions outside of this article.

Planning

In the internship period offered by universities, let alone preparing for working life, you can't even adapt to your working environment. The adaptation period varies from person to person, but I think doing a long-term internship will be the healthiest. Conditions vary for each company in long-term internships; some say it will be for a certain fee, while others say it won't be for a fee. Therefore, it would be beneficial to discuss this with companies when planning the internship process. It would be beneficial to choose the most suitable one for you.

When planning the internship process, I recommend considering the following:

  1. Research and try the areas you're interested in.
  2. Think about where they will take you in the future.
  3. Decide which companies you want to intern at and contact them.
  4. Review the expenses and logistics arrangements you may encounter during the internship.
  5. Learn the policies and rules of the company you'll be working at during the internship.
  6. Decide what you want to learn during the internship and create a plan to achieve these goals.
  7. Pay attention to building good relationships with colleagues and networking.
  8. Take advantage of mentoring and feedback opportunities and be proactive in improving yourself.
  9. Pay attention to fulfilling assigned tasks and responsibilities during the internship.
  10. Comply with working hours, ethical rules, and the company's security policies.

The internship process is an important step for your future career and can provide valuable experiences for you. By planning, being proactive, and making the most of opportunities at work, you can benefit from the internship process in the best way. Don't hesitate to ask for help from colleagues or mentors when in doubt about anything.

Interview

There are many written and video resources available regarding interview preparation; you can look at these. These resources can help you prepare for interviews more clearly and quickly. Fundamentally, what's important is to express yourself about the field you want to work in and that you want to work at this company. Therefore, feeling comfortable during the interview is important, but I recommend avoiding frivolous behavior.

Be sure to note down the questions you want to ask the company before the internship. Research what you can ask in advance. Ask how the internship program works, what it includes, and request documentation if possible. Review this program in detail, think about it, and decide accordingly.

Processes

Program Plan

If there's an arrangement of school + internship, you need to manage the internship process well. The internship intensifying with classes and projects may prevent you from reaching desired goals. Therefore, planning this process in advance will be healthier. Since the annual school program is already determined, it would be beneficial to take a look before including it in this planning.

Teamwork

Not every intern may start at the same point, so internship processes may differ. Stay in constant communication with other interns, try to work together, and create opportunities to build team spirit. Don't just expect guidance from where you're interning; try to be proactive. There may be freedom and comfort that comes with working alone, but it may not always be like this in your future work life. Therefore, try to learn teamwork during the internship period, so you can be more comfortable in working life.

Learning

During the learning phase, you can look at the roadmap application for guidance. Video tutorials can give you ideas at the beginning, but then I recommend progressing with documentation. Reading documentation can be difficult at the beginning. You can look at document analysis and speed reading methods to speed up this process.

Practice

The practice phase is the step that will allow you to put what you've learned into practice. There's no concept of right-wrong at the beginning, but over time you'll learn not to repeat the mistakes you made initially by seeing other methods. Now you might ask, wouldn't it make more sense to quickly do the right implementation? Yes, it's true, but in this process, you'll need to make wrong implementations to understand how correct what you've learned is. Therefore, learning the right implementation by making wrong implementations will be healthier than quickly doing the right implementation. This way, it will be possible to eliminate wrong methods faster and faster. All of this will speed up with practice. So never be afraid of making mistakes during the internship phase and try to feel comfortable while making these mistakes.

Note Taking

If you're using versioning systems like git during the practice phases, leaving notes in your commits will be helpful for looking back and seeing what you did and how you thought. You can take notes instead, but taking notes through git will be easier. You can also share these notes with other interns during the internship. This way, you can better understand projects you worked on together with other interns. Doing these daily will be beneficial for both your internship diary and yourself.

If you like writing, sharing these as a blog will be quite helpful for future interns. I'll try to update this article based on feedback from our intern colleagues. I'm looking forward to your views as well.

Good luck!