By Rahul Ramteke, MBA Class of 2016

It’s really hard to believe that we are second years now. Most of us spent the past summer interning at different companies. I spent my summer interning at AccuWeather, Inc. as a Product Management Graduate Intern in their Digital Media Department and focused primarily on setting up the end-to-end processes for partner product implementations. Below are the key takeaways that I would like to share from my internship at AccuWeather.

1) Setting up the expectations – It is essential to set up the right expectations with your supervisor in terms of the deliverables and work hours. This could also extend to the company culture and decorum.

2) Scope of the internship project – A lot of internship projects at big corporations are well defined. However, a lot of mid sized organizations do not have a well-defined internship program. It is an intern’s responsibility to seek clarification and approval on the scope of his/her project after discussing it with his/her supervisor as early as possible.

3) Not just meeting people but making a personal connection – My project at AccuWeather involved a lot of cross-functional collaboration. I was fortunate enough that whoever I interacted with was always willing to take out the time and extend help. I think the thing that helped me was that I was able to make a deep connection with the people I was interacting with. This actually helped me when the time of my final presentation came, as everyone supported my recommendations and rallied behind me.

4) Get buy-in before your presentation – The last thing that really helped me avoid awkwardness in my final presentation was that I met all the stakeholders in the final week of the internship and gave them a rough idea of what I had achieved and the recommendations that were to follow. This avoided a lot of potential confusion or embarrassment, as my recommendations did not come as a shock to the key stakeholders.