Providing Feedback to Your Internship Employer
Summer is wrapping up (for those of us on the quarter system; the rest of you on the semester system have been back for about a month), and if you had a summer internship, you may have been asked to give an end-of-internship presentation.
This presentation likely looks different depending on both your internship and company culture — a corporate journalism internship will have much different expectations than an internship at a startup for the next big app. However, there’s a few things that will be helpful to keep in mind regardless of your company environment.
Whether or not you’ve already wrapped up your internship, these are some tips that will prove useful whenever you need to give feedback at a job.
Before you begin
During your internship, keep track of what things are working well, and what aren’t. Did you feel as though your skills could have been better utilized? Did you like the frequent check ins about goals with your supervisors? Keeping track of what you’re doing on at least a weekly basis will help you remember more specifically what was going on at your internship, rather than just having a general feeling of “I really liked it” or “I hated it”.
While Writing
The first thing you need to do is know your audience. A corporate internship may have a specific channel through which you should give feedback. Along those lines, a more formal internship may require equally formal feedback, perhaps in the form of a report. If you had a mentor you were close to, you might also be able to give some more informal feedback over email or put together in a document or powerpoint.
On the other hand, if you were one of few or the only intern who worked at a startup, you may be able to meet with both your direct supervisor and other higher-ups in the company interested in getting feedback. Having a script for these meetings is quite useful, and will allow you to decide how much or how little feedback you decide to give.
In my experience, I had a few meetings — one with my supervisor I worked the most with, one with the CEO, and lastly I presented at the general company meeting. The tactics I used for each differed, as you might expect: with my supervisor, I gave feedback about the engineering process side of things; the CEO, higher level management feedback; and my presentation was an overview of my internship experience — goals for the summer, what I did or did not accomplished, and true to my personality, customized memes.
Along with formality comes how to provide effective feedback. Telling your supervisor or mentor (even if you have grown to have a close relationship) that you hated your job and they should revamp the entire company culture likely will not be effective and won’t land you a great recommendation letter.
A common “design thinking” format of giving feedback is “I like, I wish, I wonder” — providing details on what you liked about your internship, what you wish your internship had or did, and what you wonder may have happened under different circumstances.
If that’s too touchy-feely for you, at least make sure to include a few positives with your critique, and avoid simply saying something was bad. Include one or two suggestions about how the company or department might make things better.
The writing!
So you’re ready to sit down and write! If you were able to keep track of your experience throughout your internship, take a look at your notes now. If you’re doing a retrospective reflection, try looking back over emails and your work projects to jog your memory. Start a document and do a brain dump of your thoughts and what you’d like to convey to your audience. Try to take about 30–60 minutes to do this, giving yourself time to remember things you may have forgotten.
Take another hour or so to create a powerpoint, formal report, or just organizing your notes into an outline for your eyes only. If you’ll be sharing a copy of the document with a coworker, it will be helpful to get some feedback from an older schoolmate or a friend in a similar industry.
Giving the feedback
If you’re giving a formal presentation, make sure to dress the part. Even if your company is more casual, you can still look nice without “dressing up” — a fresh pair of jeans and a button down (or a company shirt if you have one, perhaps!).
Make sure you’ve looked over your notes and familiarized yourself with what you’d like to say, even if it’s a casual meeting. Practicing with a roommate is an easy way to do this.
A Few Notes
Make sure you start early! The last thing you want to have happen is to be rushing to give feedback and have it look that way to your employers and coworkers.
If you’re nervous about giving feedback, remember: your employer likely appreciates what you have to say, especially if it’s a small company. Making sure what you have to say is constructive and doesn’t come off as complaining will help you with your feedback’s reception, resulting in a productive conversation for everyone involved.