9. Completing Your Internship and Planning Next Steps
Learning Objectives
In this chapter, you will learn how to:
- develop and execute a systematic approach to completing internship projects and responsibilities while maintaining professional standards through to your final day
- create comprehensive handover documentation that ensures the continued success of your projects after your departure
- transform your internship experience into compelling evidence of your professional capabilities for future career opportunities.
Imagine this Scenario
Michael sat on his childhood bed, staring at the university degree hanging on his wall. Three months had passed since completing his environmental engineering internship at Brisbane Water, and four months since graduating. The initial euphoria of finishing university with distinction had faded into an uncomfortable reality and he had no job prospects and mounting anxiety about his future.
During his final semester, while his classmates attended career fairs and networked with industry professionals, Michael had buried himself in textbooks and assignment submissions. “I need a perfect GPA to get into a top PhD program,” he’d repeatedly assured himself. He’d turned down invitations to industry networking events, reasoning that those hours were better spent perfecting assignments. His dream of pursuing groundbreaking research in environmental remediation technologies had driven every decision, including treating his internship primarily as a way to impress potential PhD supervisors with his technical capabilities.
His internship supervisor had hinted at potential opportunities within the organisation, but Michael had politely deflected these conversations, explaining his academic aspirations. He’d assumed his excellent performance reviews and impressive grade point average would naturally lead to PhD offers. Now, scrolling through his phone, he could see his former intern colleagues sharing LinkedIn updates about their new roles at engineering firms, while his own PhD applications remained unanswered. Several universities had responded that they wanted to see more research experience and industry engagement, things he’d overlooked in his singular focus on grades.
The rejection email from his fifth PhD application this week glowed mockingly on his screen. “While your academic achievements are impressive, we are seeking candidates with demonstrated research experience and project management capabilities…” The words struck him like a physical blow. His stellar academic record and completed internship somehow weren’t translating into research opportunities. He realised now that he had missed valuable opportunities to engage in research projects, build relationships with potential supervisors, and develop his research network.
Tomorrow, he would start another shift at the local shopping centre, a “temporary” retail position that was starting to feel uncomfortably permanent. The irony wasn’t lost on him, he had a degree in environmental engineering and dreams of a PhD, yet spent his days explaining return policies and restocking shelves. His manager had already offered him a supervisor position, seeing his capability for more responsibility. While the promotion was flattering, it felt like stepping further away from his academic aspirations.
“At least I’m earning money,” he told himself, trying to ignore the growing pit in his stomach. But each time a customer asked about his studies or career plans, he felt a sharp pang of regret. He had let the crucial transition period between graduation and further study slip away, and now faced the challenging task of trying to enter academia as an outsider rather than making a smooth progression from coursework to PhD program.
The task of restarting his academic journey felt overwhelming. His internship experience was becoming increasingly distant, his professional connections were fading, and his technical knowledge needed refreshing. What had seemed like a logical decision, focusing on grades above all else, had created a significant hurdle in his academic progression. He now understood that academic excellence alone doesn’t guarantee research opportunities, and that professional relationships, research experience, and industry engagement carry just as much weight as grades in PhD applications.
Documenting Your Impact: Final Achievements and Project Handovers
As your internship draws to a close, thorough documentation of your achievements and careful preparation of handover materials become crucial tasks that impact both your future career opportunities and your professional reputation. Think of this documentation as creating a professional legacy, it demonstrates your contributions while ensuring your work continues to benefit the organisation after your departure.
Capturing Final Achievements
Recording your achievements requires more than simply listing completed tasks. Consider the story of James, a chemical engineering intern who initially struggled to document his contributions effectively. In his first draft achievement list, he wrote “Helped with laboratory testing procedures.” While accurate, this description failed to capture the scope and impact of his work. After receiving feedback from his supervisor, he revised this to: “Optimised laboratory testing procedures for polymer degradation analysis, reducing processing time by 35% while maintaining 99.9% accuracy rates. This improvement allowed the team to increase weekly sample processing from 50 to 75 specimens without requiring additional resources.”
Notice how the revised version includes:
- the specific technical area (polymer degradation analysis)
- quantifiable improvements (35% time reduction)
- quality metrics (99.9% accuracy)
- business impact (increased processing capacity)
- resource implications (no additional resources required).
This detailed approach to documenting achievements serves multiple purposes. It helps your organisation understand your contributions, provides concrete examples for your portfolio, and gives future employers specific evidence of your capabilities. When documenting your achievements, consider structuring each entry around these elements:
Creating Effective Handover Documentation
Professional handover documentation ensures your work continues to benefit the organisation after your departure. Think of it as creating a detailed map that allows others to navigate and build upon your contributions effectively.
Example
Effective handover documentation should include:
- project overview
- clear description of project objectives
- current status of deliverables
- key stakeholders and their roles
- important deadlines and milestones
- technical Documentation
- detailed procedures and workflows
- access credentials and permissions (appropriately secured)
- known issues or limitations
- future improvement opportunities
- location of relevant files and resources
- contact Information
- key team members and their responsibilities
- subject matter experts consulted
- external vendors or contractors involved
- decision context
- reasoning behind major technical decisions
- attempted approaches that weren’t successful
- potential future challenges to consider
- lessons learned during implementation.
When preparing handover documentation, imagine you’re creating instructions for someone who has your technical skills but lacks any context about your specific projects. What information would they need to continue your work effectively? What potential questions or challenges might they face?
💡Remember
Maintain appropriate confidentiality in your documentation. Work with your supervisor to understand what information can be included in your personal portfolio versus what should remain solely in internal handover documents. This distinction helps protect both your organisation’s interests and your professional reputation.
Maintaining Professional Connections Post-Internship
Earlier in this book, we explored how to build professional relationships during your internship, including the strategic use of LinkedIn and the development of workplace connections. As your internship concludes, these foundational elements become crucial for maintaining long-term professional relationships. Let’s examine how to effectively leverage these established connections during your transition from intern to professional.
Your LinkedIn profile serves as a living bridge between your internship experience and future opportunities. When documenting your internship achievements on LinkedIn, consider how your updates can nurture professional relationships. For example, rather than simply listing technical accomplishments, acknowledge the collaborative nature of your work. Perhaps instead of writing an update or note that states:
Contributed to the development of a predictive maintenance system that reduced downtime by 25%, working closely with the engineering team to integrate machine learning algorithms with existing maintenance protocols.
Perhaps write:
Proud to have collaborated with @Sarah Chen and @David Thompson on developing our new predictive maintenance system. By combining Sarah’s expertise in signal processing with David’s deep knowledge of our maintenance protocols, we achieved a 25% reduction in equipment downtime. Special thanks to our mentor @James Liu for guiding our integration of machine learning algorithms into the existing framework. Excited to see how the team continues to build on this foundation!
This approach accomplishes several goals:
- documents your technical achievement
- acknowledges team contributions, highlighting the contributions of specific individuals
- creates opportunities for colleagues to engage with your update
- demonstrates your understanding of both technical and collaborative aspects of professional work.
Remember our earlier discussion about workplace relationships and person-environment fit? Those relationships you’ve cultivated during your internship require careful attention during the transition period. Consider developing a systematic approach to maintaining these connections:
- document key professional relationships
- note specific projects you worked on together
- record unique insights each colleague shared
- identify areas of mutual professional interest
- track preferred communication styles and methods
- create a Communication Calendar
- schedule regular check-ins with key mentors
- set reminders to engage with colleagues’ LinkedIn updates
- plan periodic emails sharing relevant industry insights
- maintain awareness of important organisational milestones
- develop value-adding Interactions
- share articles relevant to ongoing projects
- offer insights from your new experiences
- maintain interest in project outcomes
- connect colleagues with useful resources or contacts.
Let’s examine how these principles played out differently for Sarah, James, and Michael.
Michael’s Story Continued
Six months into his retail position, Michael received a LinkedIn notification, James had tagged him in a post about their shared environmental engineering internship project. The post celebrated the one-year anniversary of their stormwater management system implementation, acknowledging everyone who had contributed to its success. This unexpected connection prompted Michael to reflect on the relationships he had let slip away.
Rather than continuing to focus solely on PhD applications, Michael began reaching out to his former colleagues. He started with a thoughtful message to Sarah, who had recently shared her success implementing environmental monitoring systems at her new firm. Instead of leading with his own situation, he genuinely congratulated her on her achievements and asked thoughtful questions about her work. This authentic interest in her professional journey opened the door to rebuilding their connection.
Through these renewed connections, Michael gained valuable insights about combining academic and industry aspirations. Sarah shared how she maintained research connections while working in industry, even co-authoring papers with university partners. James described his involvement in industry-funded research projects that aligned academic rigor with practical applications. These conversations helped Michael understand that pursuing a PhD and maintaining industry connections weren’t mutually exclusive goals.
These rekindled relationships proved transformative. When a research position opened at Sarah’s firm focusing on environmental remediation technologies, perfectly aligned with Michael’s PhD interests, she immediately thought of him. The role offered the opportunity to conduct industry-based research while maintaining connections with academic institutions. James, who served on the company’s research advisory board, provided a strong reference highlighting Michael’s technical capabilities and collaborative potential.
Michael’s story demonstrates that while early career transitions benefit from maintaining consistent professional connections, it’s never too late to rebuild these relationships authentically. His experience also highlights how professional networks can help bridge the gap between academic and industry aspirations, creating opportunities that serve both goals.
This experience taught Michael valuable lessons about maintaining professional relationships:
- professional connections thrive on genuine interest in others’ success
- industry and academic pursuits can complement rather than compete
- authentic relationship building matters more than perfect timing
- former colleagues can provide unique perspectives on career possibilities
- professional networks often reveal unexpected opportunities aligning multiple career goals.
The path from internship to career rarely follows a straight line. As Michael’s journey illustrates, our professional relationships often serve as the bridges that connect different aspects of our career aspirations. Whether pursuing academic excellence, industry recognition, or a combination of both, maintaining authentic professional connections provides opportunities we might never discover in isolation. His initial focus on academic achievements at the expense of professional relationships could have permanently limited his career options. However, by reconnecting authentically with former colleagues like Sarah and James, Michael discovered possibilities that aligned his research interests with industry innovation. This experience demonstrates that professional networks are not just about career advancement, they’re about creating a community of peers who understand and support our professional growth. When we maintain genuine interest in our colleagues’ successes, remain open to different career pathways, and actively nurture professional relationships, we create an environment where opportunities can find us. As you conclude your own internship, remember that the connections you’ve built are not just entries in your contact list, they’re the foundation of your professional community, capable of revealing pathways that might otherwise remain hidden. By maintaining these relationships authentically and remaining genuinely interested in others’ successes, you build a professional network that supports not just your immediate career goals, but your long-term professional development. The time invested in nurturing these connections, as Michael discovered, often leads to opportunities that perfectly align our professional aspirations with practical possibilities.
Activity 9.1: Planning Your Professional Transition
This activity helps you create a structured approach to maintaining professional relationships and documenting achievements as you conclude your internship. Working through each section will help you develop a clear strategy for your transition from intern to professional.
Part 1: Relationship mapping
Begin by creating a detailed map of your professional relationships from your internship. Draw yourself in the centre of a page and identify:
For each person identified, note:
- their role and expertise
- projects you’ve worked on together
- specific insights or knowledge they’ve shared
- areas of mutual professional interest.
Part 2: Documentation strategy
Create a structured plan for documenting your internship achievements that maintains professional connections. For each major project, record:
- Technical documentation:
- project objectives and outcomes
- key methodologies used
- measurable achievements.
- future development opportunities
- Relationship documentation:
- team members’ contributions
- collaborative insights gained
- learning moments shared
- potential future collaboration areas.
- Professional growth:
- skills developed
- challenges overcome
- mentor guidance received
- areas for continued development.
Part 3: LinkedIn update planning
Draft three different versions of a LinkedIn update about a significant project from your internship:
- Version 1: Technical focus
- Write a purely technical description of the project and its outcomes.
- Version 2: Relationship focus
- Create an update that emphasises collaboration and team achievements.
- Version 3: Integrated approach
- combine technical achievements with relationship acknowledgments
- include specific colleague tags
- highlight both measurable outcomes and collaborative success.
- Share these drafts with a classmate and discuss:
- Which version feels most engaging?
- How might each version impact professional relationships?
- What opportunities for future interaction does each create?
Part 4: Transition timeline
Create a 3-month timeline spanning your final month of internship and two months following, including:
💡Remember
The goal isn’t just to create a plan, but to develop sustainable practices for maintaining professional relationships throughout your career. Consider how each element of your plan supports both your immediate transition and long-term professional growth.
Share your completed transition plan with a peer, discussing:
-
- How does your plan balance technical documentation with relationship maintenance?
- What challenges do you anticipate in implementing your plan?
- How might your plan adapt to different career scenarios?
- What opportunities for mutual support can you identify?
This structured approach helps ensure you maintain valuable professional connections while creating comprehensive documentation of your achievements, setting the foundation for continued career growth.
Key Takeaways
In this chapter, we covered:
- how professional documentation serves multiple purposes during internship completion, acting as both a record of achievements for future employers and a foundation for maintaining valuable professional relationships through thoughtful acknowledgment of collaborative work
- the critical importance of creating comprehensive handover materials that capture not just technical details but also decision contexts, future opportunities, and relationship connections, enabling your work to continue benefiting the organisation while maintaining professional bridges
- how maintaining professional networks requires intentional effort and systematic approaches, including regular communication, genuine interest in colleagues’ successes, and strategic use of platforms like LinkedIn to sustain meaningful connections beyond the internship period
- the importance of recognising that career paths rarely follow straight lines, with Michael’s story demonstrating how professional relationships can reveal unexpected opportunities that align academic and industry aspirations in ways we might not discover in isolation
- the lasting value of investing time in nurturing professional relationships, showing how authentic connections built during internships can evolve into supportive professional communities that enhance both immediate career prospects and long-term professional development.
