End Off Your Internship on a Strong Note

You spent the last few months meeting new people, learning about the company, and exploring your future career path. You think to yourself, “There’s not much to do in the last two weeks except closing out my project.”

Wrong.

Ending an internship doesn’t necessarily mean there’s not much to do.

That means you have extra time to do something you can only do because you are leaving.

So, let’s talk about what to do.

Set Up Proper Handoffs

During my final week as a Tesla Motors intern, I worked everyday as a full-time employee.

It’s time to wrap up your project in a bow for someone else.

Instead of working on my recurring project, I set up meetings to transfer the work to the new owner.

I developed the foundation for chat log insights during my tenure. These updates identified the top 10 customer support/sales questions in chat and started at a very small scale with a focus on energy. Slowly this expanded to incorporate the automative side and I presented to a selective stakeholder group on a monthly cadence. A month later, I led the entire chat insights adding a complete chat funnel analysis (chat/lead/order conversion) to a cross-functional leadership group on a weekly cadence.

My updates would synthesize key learnings from the data to tell a story about the customer and how we can improve their experience. When we see “Customers seem to chat in about [x] product’s function 20%” for example, we can perhaps add content to the support page to better self-serve our customers with accessible information.

However, with my departure, I could not leave the team without these insights. That is why…

• I synced with the new project lead to transfer this project and observe them derive these insights.
• I created a step by step reference guide that walked through the process to derive the insights.

What did this do?

• By setting up a meeting to hand off and observe, I cleared up any confusions, questions, and concerns.
• By creating a reference guide, I provided the new project lead something to refer to without my presence.
• The project lead felt grateful and appreciative with the preparations made and this leaves a good synergy for the team as well.

Tie Up Any Loose Ends

Your list will not be this long, so make sure you go through your to-do list! Discuss with your manager what you will complete and what will be pending.

Two weeks before my internship I ended, I outlined all the outstanding work left. I outlined what tasks 1) deliver the most value and 2) is feasible in these two weeks for me.

I informed my manager and mentor of what my focuses were and what I may not be able to address in the limited time.

Document Your Work

Alongside running the chat insights, I assisted my team in developing reporting for energy leads and relied on a variety of dashboards and tools to do so.

I created a reference guide to document these reports, location, purpose, and how to export them. This allows any future intern to understand what reports our team heavily relies on and what metrics we care about.

Little Actions Speak Volumes

On that note, a pending task I had was creating an energy leads report. I jumped on the call with this internal stakeholder for the first time and established what fields they were looking for.

I wanted to move quickly on this because it was my last day and to ensure that team was well-equipped.

I delivered the report and while also providing other contacts for their future needs.

My internship ended and I shared this amazing experience on LinkedIn.

A few weeks later, I see a thank you email from the same person who recognized me from my LinkedIn article!

It turns out they are a Sr. Product Manager and my work was super valuable for their project. They enjoyed reading my article and saw that I was an aspiring Product Manager, so they offered to chat with me about the role and prepare for my next career move.

I was awestruck. I immediately jumped on our chat that I anticipated to be a mere 30 minutes. We talked for over an hour!

I felt overwhelmed with the amount of support and advice I gained from our discussion. I asked why.

“If you said ‘it’s my last day, I can’t do it’ that would be fair game. But, you didn’t. You did work that was valuable for my project. That is why I want to help you.”

Send Thank You Notes

I definitely heavily relied on individuals in my team but also outside of my team.

Part of running the chat insights required me talking to the experts in Inside Sales and Data Scientists to assist in creating a live data feed from our database.

The least I can do is say, “thank you” to show my appreciation to my coworkers for their support in my growth and accomplishments.

What to include in your thank you note?

• Give a reason why you’re thanking them (did they mentor you? did they assist you for a project? etc.)
• Tell them what you learned or how their efforts were valuable for you
• Provide them with your contact info to keep in touch

Here’s a simple template:

Hi [coworker],

Thank you for supporting me during my tenure at [company]. I appreciate your help [how they helped you] for [project/task] because [it helped me accomplish x, y, z].

[what you learned from them/project] has taught me a lot and I will definitely take these [learnings/skills] moving forward.

I hope we can keep in touch in the future. Feel free to reach me via any of these channels:

• Email: [Your email]
• Phone Number: [Your phone number]
• LinkedIn: [Your LinkedIn URL]

Thanks again for everything!

Best,

[Your name]

Be Personable

You’re more than welcome to use this template, but remember to be your authentic self and make your thank you note personable. The more you invoke your genuine feelings of appreciation, the more likely this note will be memorable for the recipient.

Congrats, you accomplished so much during your internship!

My experiences helped me grow, how about you?

Be proud at all you’ve done during your time as an intern.

Internships are a valuable opportunity for us to test the waters as we navigate through our career.

Even though your internship is over, the connections you made there are not. Keep in touch with your past mentors/managers and let them know how you are developing your career.

Building relationships will be your biggest strength for opportunities. That’s why it is important to do these little things and leave on a strong note.

Return offers are uncertain.

But these connections will be your greatest advocate if an opportunity does come around, so don’t just make them.

Build, nurture, and value them!