A Student’s Guide to Internship Excellence

By: Ashraf Ismail, ALU student

It’s that time of the year again when most college students will be preparing to head off for summer internships at their dream companies, or not. I understand the pressure. Having interned within 3 industries in 4 countries littered across 2 continents, I would like to share my experience with you not as a career guide but as a fellow student on a journey towards professional excellence.

I am Ashraf Ismail, a third-year business management student at the African Leadership University. My professional journey so far has been centred around my passion for youth development in my home country, Sudan. Therefore, from each internship, I always identify, in advance, the skill I plan to develop during the period of the internship. In my most recent internship with DAL Group in Sudan, the skill I looked to develop was that of salesmanship.

It all began with my search for internships last year. The pressure became real when my other classmates were getting offers from top companies and I had been dragging myself through the various assessments administered by the career development team at ALU. These assessments were to be used to determine the companies the career development team would pitch me to. However, I didn’t get an internship until I took initiative and began looking for opportunities by myself. I was referred to DAL Group by a trusted member of my personal-cum-professional network who vouched for my consistent excellence from my previous internships. I was then given an offer to work with the company later in 2017.

DAL Group is one of the biggest diversified conglomerates in Sudan. For my internship, I worked with their food division, DAL Food Industries as a sales & business development intern in the capital of Sudan — Khartoum. Working in Sudan was particularly important for me as I had left the country at a very young age only to return 22 Eids later. Therefore, finding an internship that kept me close to family was very important. But beside this, DAL Group presented a challenging internship opportunity that allowed me to learn from one of top companies in the country. Of course, I chose it over the other offers I received from other companies.

Going into the internship, one of my concerns was whether I was ready to take on the responsibility that was about to be thrust on my shoulders during this internship. However, reflecting on the rigorous training I had received from the career development team as well as the stellar performance I had exhibited during my last internships, my confidence shot up. I was ready.

Getting to DAL, I hit the ground running. I was working on the overall operations of the organisation, ensuring an increase in efficiency, and ensuring a smooth flow of data and information across the organisation. A big part of my job was trying to figure out how the company could improve its overall efficiency beyond the one-dimensional approach of cost-cutting. I was particularly thrilled to be doing this because it allowed me to take on projects that were much broader than the Coca-Cola brand I was initially to be focusing on.

During the course of my internship, having been away from Sudan for so long, I could not escape the impostor syndrome that made me feel like a stranger in my own home. I was first confronted with the challenge of communicating knowledge I had acquired in one language (English) into another (Arabic). That was tough. But thanks to the family at DAL, this challenge and more were made to feel a lot lighter.

Showing up at work and being greeted with so much warmth had its way of brightening every day at DAL Group. The sense of family within the team reassured me that I was not at a company, I was at home. Furthermore, the commitment towards the professional development of everyone at the company, from the MD to the freshly-minted intern, reassured me that I had made the right decision by working with DAL Group.

Wrapping up my internship, the feedback I got from my managers at DAL were off the charts. They highlighted my consistency in exceeding their expectations in the tasks that I took on as one of my strongest assets during my internship with them. I was elated beyond words when one of my managers said: “I can see everything that ALU says about its young leaders in you.”

How did I get here? You may be asking. Here’s how:

I took advantage of ALU’s Leadership Core

In today’s digital world, the ability to collect data, analyse data, make sense of it, and communicate it to the ideal audience in the best way possible is increasing in demand. This is what ALU’s leadership core prepares you for. The Data and Decisions equipped me with the ability to deal with complex sets of data and make sound decisions based on them. The Communicating for Impact course taught me the importance of tailoring your content to meet the needs of your target audience in a way that will be most beneficial to them. The Projects course taught me how to manage complex projects and present my findings in the most appealing and most impactful way possible. Lastly, the entrepreneurial leadership course enhanced my ability to lead myself alongside others throughout each process. Taking advantage of what each course had to offer allowed me to perform excellently at internships.

I proactively went the extra mile

With every task that I was assigned, I made it a point of duty to consistently do more than was required. This allowed me to consistently impress my managers with the quality and depth of my work. From doing this, I realised that this is honestly the easiest way to leave a positive impression: “under-promise, over-deliver.” As you go into your internships, begin by striving to do what you say and deliver on time. Then take it a notch higher by doing more than you say and strive to deliver quality work way before the deadline. By doing this, you would be of maximum value to the firm.

I focused on improving

We millennials have a way of thinking we know it all and our way of thinking, by being more modern, is the most suitable for the companies we intern at. But I have come to realise that there could be nothing further from the truth. Very often, we go into companies that are smeared with one problem after another and as forward-thinkers, we already begin brainstorming solutions to them. We want to “add value.” While that’s great, I have learnt that the only thing we could do wrong is to try to create something new to fix an old problem. By doing that, we ignore the systems that were already in place and very often, never get the problem solved. This is because people are naturally averse to novelty especially when it disrupts the status quo. However, people tend to be more tolerant of improvement since they better the status quo. With this in mind, I was able to improve the systems I engaged with at DAL Group and solve the problems I encountered during the course of my internship.

In summary, finding internships are just as difficult as excelling at internships. What makes all the difference is your attitude toward your work which is defined by how you bring together your hard and soft skills to achieve the goals you set for yourself.

This has been my experience. The time has come for you to go craft yours!