Internship Playbook: First Week Tips

In today’s episode, host Rebecca Harrington shares information on how to make your first week as an intern a success. Information discussed includes showing curiosity over perfection, asking clarifying questions, taking detailed notes, learning workplace communication norms, and building relationships early. But first, Jordan Rembrecht starts the episode by answering a listener mailbag question about how to keep track of the many new people you meet during interviews and in the early days of an internship, offering practical strategies like note‑taking and proactive communication. After listening to this episode, we hope you have a better understanding of how to confidently navigate your first week and start your internship strong. 

Full episode transcript can be found on the episode page. Below is a general timestamp summary.  

00:00–01:00 | Introduction & Episode Overview 
Rebecca opens the episode and introduces the main topic: tips for making your first week as an intern successful. Jordan joins as co‑host, setting the stage for the discussion. 

01:00–04:00 | Listener Mailbag: Tracking New Contacts 
Jordan answers a listener question about keeping track of the many people met during interviews and early internship days, offering practical strategies such as noting names, titles, and roles and staying proactive in communication. 

04:00–10:00 | Preparing Before Day One 
Jordan explains what to expect between accepting an internship offer and the start date, including onboarding timelines, background checks, I‑9 documentation, and key questions to ask HR or supervisors prior to starting. 

10:00–15:00 | Starting Strong: Curiosity, Communication & Priorities 
Rebecca discusses beginning the internship with curiosity rather than perfection, emphasizing asking questions, clarifying priorities, observing team norms, and building trust early through communication. 

15:00–19:00 | Workplace Norms, Note‑Taking & Tools 
The hosts cover unwritten rules such as communication styles, meeting etiquette, arrival times, dress expectations, and the importance of thorough note‑taking on names, processes, software, and IT procedures. 

19:00–22:00 | Building Relationships & Final Advice 
They highlight introducing yourself confidently, owning mistakes, and remembering that internships are learning experiences. The episode closes with encouragement and an invitation for listener questions. 

Listeners in the College of DuPage community can visit our website. All other listeners are encouraged to view the resources of their local community college, WIOA training programs, or other local support centers.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Career Ready podcast. Learn about resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn, interviewing, and all the things you need to be career ready with the Career Services Center at College of DuPage. I'm one of your hosts, Rebecca Harrington. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about tips to make your first week as an intern a success. And I'm your other host, Jordan Rembrecht. I'm going to start our episode today answering a listener mailbag question submitted to careerpodcast@cod.edu. The question we received was, how do I keep track of all the different people I meet at a new company? That's a good question, because there are a lot of people that you interact with, thinking even the initial interview phase, you're interacting with, human resources representative, the hiring manager. Also, panel interviews nowadays are very common, where you may have, multiple people interviewing you at once. Oftentimes, your future teammates. And with that comes a need to remember the different people that you meet with. So my recommendation would be during the interview to make note of the names of each interviewer after the interview, but before you drive home. So when it's still fresh in your mind, write down their title and how you would be connected to them in the job. Also, think ahead to when you start the internship. You're going to be meeting even more new people. So during your first week, I recommend having a notebook with them, writing down the names, the titles, the departments of the different people that you meet with. Do this after you meet with them or after you finish your tour. Just like taking notes on a new topic. This will help you retain the information and avoid any awkwardness by forgetting people's names. The larger the company, the more departments there are, the more employees there are. So by taking notes, you'll start to piece together these connections and how you may interact with these coworkers or departments in the future. Great advice. I would say to during the interview, it's okay to ask somebody like, oh, I'm so sorry, can you just I want to make sure I get this down or it is okay to take the notes and write it down. It just shows that you're interested. Absolutely. Yeah. Or I say, ask for business cards. You know, sometimes they don't have them, which is fine. But if they do that, that saves a lot of steps. So. All right, so before we talk about tips for your first week, we're actually going to go back to Jordan for a minute because she has some great tips to think about in the months, weeks and days before you start your internship. Yeah. So as we've talked about on prior episodes, some companies hire for interns significantly in advance. So summer offers may be extended as early as September the prior year. And while you may accept the offer, then there's still going to be an onboarding component that will likely happen closer to your start date if the company requires a background check or drug screen. It'll likely happen closer to your start date so that the company can stay compliant with their background check policy, which is typically 60 to 90 days before the start date. If this is the case, as the HR representative at the time you accept the offer once, expect the onboarding details to be sent to you. Make a reminder on your calendar for that date to keep an eye on your inbox, as well as that spam folder. Also, I recommend to be proactive in your communication and questions. There may be some time when there's quote unquote radio silence from the company in the weeks or months leading up to your internship. Don't be afraid to ask important questions. If it's within a week of your start date and you haven't yet been communicated. Logistics for your first day. Reach out to your manager so that you both have time to coordinate. And lastly, when it comes to what you should bring with you on your first day of work, always a good idea to ask what you need to bring. One that's very common, would be documents for your I-9, because U.S. employers must complete an I-9 form for their new hires. You'll need to bring documents with you on your first day, so that employers can verify both your identity and work authorization. If you're unsure of what types of documents you need, check out the USCIS website beforehand. If you need your birth certificate that you haven't seen in 20 years, don't wait to look for it. Great advice. Yes, absolutely. That's one of those things that, I think we forget about, especially if you haven't done it before or it's been a while. Sure. Yeah. Those things, if you just recently moved to maybe out of your parent's house, and now all of a sudden you need those things like you want to have, make sure you have the time to get those documents before you start. All right. So then now it's here, right? It's our first day. It can be very exciting and overwhelming. So you're learning about a new environment, new people, new expectations, often all at the same time. So let's talk about how to start strong in your first week as an intern. Even if you're nervous or unsure. Trust me, all interns feel the same. In fact, I would say all new hires feel the same, but especially interns. So tip one is to show up. Curious. Not perfect. Right? So let's start with this. No one expects you to know everything on day one. Your first job, your job in the first week is not to be perfect. It's to be curious, to be excited to to learn more. So you're going to ask questions. You're going to take notes. You're going to observe how people communicate and work together. When I think about being curious, what I think most about is asking questions. If you're not sure how to do something, or you don't understand what someone asks you to do, say something like, I want to make sure I'm doing this correctly. Can you walk me through it? This tells your supervisor that you care about getting it right. Here are some other things that come up again and again when I talk to supervisors who work with interns. They don't expect you to know everything. They don't expect perfection. But what they do want is communication. Most supervisors wish interns knew that asking questions is a good thing. Admitting you're unsure is better than guessing. And speaking up early prevents bigger problems later. One supervisor told me if an intern is quiet, I don't assume they're confident. I worry that they're lost and I always, I always say this because it happened to me one time and I vowed never again. I would rather look a little silly now than a lot silly later when I mess up and they ask, why didn't you just ask if you were unsure? Don't just be like, well, oh wait, did they say I should do this first or that first? Even if they already told you, even if it's in your notes. But for some reason, your notes are unclear. Trust me, they prefer that you go and ask. Before just assuming, you know, ask. Can you clarify this? I want to double check my understanding. Also, this is a big one. Is this the right priority? Because you could, as an intern, you know, likely the first day is going to be very controlled as far as you know, you're going to, the onboarding process and meeting a lot of people. But as you go, you might start getting projects from different people. And if you are ever at a point where you're not sure, okay, well, this person gave me a project and this other person gave me a project to go to your supervisor and ask, what is the priority? Or you just told me three different things I should do. What do you recommend I start with? Another, questions that you can think about. You know, I guess really to show initiative as you're doing your work. It doesn't mean that you have to do everything by yourself, right? So as you work, follow up after you have a meeting to make sure that you, you know, again, ask questions about what happened or, you know, do the things that they talked about that you do in the meeting. Setting a quick recap email. Thank you for talking with me today. I really appreciated learning about these things. It sounds like my next step is to do this. I mean, that may seem like overkill, but it's not, especially in the beginning. It's always helpful to make sure that both of you heard the same thing during the meeting. And then you can even just ask, what's the next step? You know, what do you recommend I start with? And of course, let someone know when you're stuck. Right. That is the biggest thing. You know, if you sit there for, you know, two hours trying to figure it out, and then you have to go and ask the question, will you just last two hours of time that you could have been working? So when you do these things, here's a big one is that it's going to actually help build trust with the people that you're working with. Especially that first week, if they see that you're a person who asks when you're confused, that you make sure that your priorities are right, then they're more likely to trust you with things in the future. And so, Jordan, you know, you kind of talked about this with your listener question as far as like, you're going to meet a lot of people, you know, what do you think as far as, like, why it's important to build trust quickly with the people that you're working with? Sure. So I always say, you know, think of the people you work with as more than just your current coworkers or your current managers. You know, they could also be mentors. They could be future references. So building that positive rapport with them, being curious and even owning up to things is going to help strengthen that trust. What you're going to need as a foundation for these long term connections. Oh, that's a really good point. As far as, admitting when maybe you didn't do something right. That I think is very, very important because it shows, again, that you're not going to try to hide things or, you know, humility. Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously, if that's happening all the time, that's not great. But, no, but it is. It is. But again, it's better to ask the question ahead of time. But if you thought you knew what you were doing, and then it turns out that you didn't own up to it. All right. Next tip is learn the unwritten rules. So and this was kind of interesting I want to I, I know I didn't put it in the notes, but I'm curious what you think about some of these. But, every workplace has these rules that kind of aren't in the handbook, right? So pay attention. I kind of talked about this earlier is how people communicate. So what we mean by that is what is the typical way that people ask questions or talk to each other. Do they send emails? Do they use the chat software. Do they do it in person? And you know, when you pay attention to that, then you will start to be able to do use the tools that everybody else is using, right? Sure. You know, how do they run meetings? Do people talk a lot? Is it more just like you go and you listen first to the supervisor and then other people, you know, just kind of paying attention to when it's appropriate for you to speak, right. How early are people arriving, to the office and when do they log off? I would say a good tip is you should arrive a little early, especially your first week. You don't want to take a chance of being late. But I will say you're not required to stay late at the end of the day. I mean, obviously, if they ask you to, that's your choice if you want to do that, to show initiative. But definitely make sure you're getting paid for that if it's a paid internship. And then just really how formal or informal that the culture is part of that can even just be how people dress. So, you know, I would say dress a bit more professional, especially your first couple days. But then if you notice that people are, you know, a little more dressed down, you know, if you're nervous, you can even ask about it. You know, hey, would it be okay if I do this? Or they might hopefully give you a dress code, right. So then you would know better, how you should be dressing, but it could also be, again, how informal is it? For example, you know, your your direct supervisor may or may not be the, the whole manager of the department. So, you know, is it best to always go to your supervisor. Should you go to your coworker first? Should you can you go talk to that big manager? Big director? You know, if people are in and out of that office all day asking them questions, great. Then maybe you can do that too. But kind of just make sure that you're following the protocol. I guess we'll say for the office, you know, what do you think, Jordan? For the some of those. Yeah, I agree, especially like the communication one, because everyone has their own communication preferences and it may depend to they may. There may be people that are communicating with that is in the office right next door to you. Or they may be in another office on the other side of the country. So it's you know, sometimes you're going to just have to, you know, rely on email or chat or sometimes you may work with that person who will only answer if you call them directly and they'll pick up the phone. So yeah, it's just kind of fueling your way out. And no to that, it's okay to have those different, you know, relying on chat with one group versus relying on email or phone or in person with others. You know, it just takes a little bit of time to feel it out, but once you do it, feel more comfortable. Yeah, that's a good point. And I think to the chat is, something an email too is new for a lot of students, right. That are just maybe this is your first job. And so remember that chat is not text, right? It's not I mean it's similar, but you know, this is not necessarily the place to use too many emojis. Right. Especially at first, you know, again, that's something you'll see like do people send, you know, gifts to each other or whatever, like okay. But for you, especially that first week, I would keep it pretty formal. Full sentences. Yeah, that kind of stuff. Until you, you kind of figure out how people are talking. All right. Next tip, take notes like it's your job because it is. Right. So you're going to get a lot of information quickly, especially that first week. And no one expects you to remember it all. It's so easy. Especially if school was really easy is really easy for you where you think you're like, of course I'm going to remember all of this. Like, of course I'm going to you will not. Especially because they're going to keep coming to you with new things. It's always better to write it down and they will notice that you're writing it down. Things to write down. As Jordan mentioned, names and roles. Right. So names, roles, departments how even ask how will I be interacting with you and jot that down so that you remember, oh, this is the person I go to. If I have a question about this, write down processes and it's okay to ask them to repeat as you're writing down the process so you can make sure that you get it down correctly. Password procedures. You know what happens if you forget a password or what you know? Are you going to be sharing a password with people? I think I also recommend write down its phone number because if you're locked out of your computer, you cannot just go to the website to check for its number. If you have it written down, then at least you got it perfect. That is so great. Oh, you know, that also made me think too, because it's like going on your phone. What's the phone use policy at the office that's, you know, even if they don't necessarily say anything, I would probably try to avoid being on your phone too much, especially that first week. And then what are their common tools and software? So, you know, what do they use for chat? What are you know, you're going to be introduced to a lot of new software, even if it's software you used in the classroom, it's probably going to be a little different when you're on site. Taking notes, as I mentioned, shows professionalism, and it saves you from having to ask the same question twice. Again, if you're ever not sure, it's better to ask, but if you write it down carefully the first time, then you're going to be a lot more successful later. They should supply you with a paper and a pen, right? If not a laptop. But obviously if they don't, please ask you. You know, you're not expected to bring those things with you. Again, if you have a favorite pen or something, feel free to bring it. But, but they definitely, should, should provide that. But they may not think of it. Right. So they might start to tell you something and you're like, oh, I should be writing this down. Ask, oh, hey, do you know, is there a place I can get, you know, pad of paper and a pen or pencil? And then that way, you know, you'll have that to take your notes. All right. Tip for clarify expectations early. One of the most important conversations you can have in your first week is about expectations. And this should be with your direct supervisor. Now you might have two supervisors, right? You might have one. That's your team manager. Maybe the other is the person that you're working with most directly every day. Maybe you're splitting your time between two different teams. But whoever those people are, that person or those people are asked some questions like, what does success look like in this role? Right. What what should I what would you want me to be doing to be successful? Another question what should I focus on learning first? Because again, you might be shown three different things, but there might be one that they want you to prioritize again, hopefully they'll tell you that. But if they don't ask and then of course this one, this one's a good one because they don't always think about it. Ask if I have questions or concerns. Who should I ask? Who's my day to day go to person? Because again, it may not be your manager, it might be a coworker. So make sure you've got all that information. And, and keep asking these questions as you go through your internship. But especially that first week. Get some clarification. All right. Last tip here or not. Last tip, I think we've got one more after this. But tip five, introduce yourself, even if it's awkward. this kind of relates back to the listener question that Jordan shared earlier. While it can feel awkward or uncomfortable, introducing yourself matters. So in other words, you'll be introduced to people. But there are also times you're going to need to introduce yourself. So a simple hi, I'm your name, the new intern working with whatever the team is. Nice to meet you. Super simple. Doesn't have to be long. Maybe practice it right the day before if you're if you're nervous, but, you know, you've got to feel comfortable going up to people and introducing yourself. Building those relationships early will help you feel more comfortable asking questions later. And it shows initiative now, we told you to write down people's names, but if you forget someone's name where you'll have your notes with you, where you forgot to mark down something, you know, whatever. Ask them the next time you see them. It's totally fine to say I'm sorry. I've met a lot of people this week. Can you remind me of your name? Here's the thing. If you don't do that the first time, you realize that you don't remember their name, and you just keep talking to someone whose name you don't remember, it's going to be much more awkward later when someone says that person's name, and you have to admit that you don't know it, so they are there. They might refer to somebody in a department. Oh, you know, you know, Jenny in, you know, payroll. Da da da da da. And in your mind you're like, oh, no, they're pretending they are. They're they're acting like, I know I should know who this is. And I don't know who this is. Right. So, yes, as awkward as it is, it's totally fine. And to be honest, there's a good chance they won't remember your name. So it'll give you both a chance to reintroduce yourself. All right, last tip for your whole internship. Remember that this is a learning experience. Your internship is not just about tasks. It's about learning how work actually happens. You are allowed to make mistakes, to ask for help, and to learn what you don't like. Just as much as what you do. Like. Starting strong is not about being flawless or perfect. It's about being engaged, prepared, and open to learning. Any other thoughts? Jordan on a first week intern, anything you've seen like someone do, that was just like, oh no, I'd say, you know, it goes back to like the setting, the expectations. You know, some of it can be done even like before you start, you know, just clarify, like, what time do I arrive? Where do you want me to park? You know, I want to park and not eat my lunch. Yeah. Should I bring my lunch? Yes. My first. Right, right. Yeah. Because sometimes your supervisor takes you to lunch the first day. Sure. So some of these things you can flesh out a little bit more in advance and then, you know, as Rebecca said, there's some great questions about expectations once you do start. But hopefully, you know, you feel a little bit more prepared kind of going into it and then just take it day by day. Yeah. Be a lot of information. It could be a lot of people. But again, no one's expecting you to memorize everything. It's okay to ask someone's name if you forgot it after the first meeting. Because people do understand, today we're all human. Yeah, absolutely. And I think I love that idea of just asking ahead of time about lunch or parking and all of that, because I think that first day is can be such a nerve wracking experience that if you can have that information ahead of time, you'll feel more in control. In control I love it. Yeah that's perfect. Yeah. And again, it's they understand that you're an intern. They understand that you're there to learn. And they're excited to help teach you and get the next generation ready. Absolutely. All right. So thanks to all of our listeners for joining us today. We hope you feel better. Prepare to start your internship. As a reminder, if we answered a listener question earlier in the episode, and if you have a question you want to hear answered in a future episode, you can submit to careerpodcast@cod.edu. Join us for our next episode for more information to help you be career ready.