Maximize Your Internship: Focus on Networking Over Learning (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Interns, interns, it's not what you're gonna learn this summer, as a matter of fact, 94% of you are gonna take jobs where they're gonna teach you dumb ass shit or stuff that you already know. They're mailing in their internships. Interns, it's not about what you're going to learn this summer, my friends. It's going to be who you meet. Please understand as you go into this internship, maximize networking, shake hands, kiss babies. If you're a wallflower, don't even do internships. Like, not the classic way, like obviously you have a skill to learn and you're lucky enough to be a developer or something like that, but fine. But if you're an intern, please understand, it is the human connections that you're gonna make. Way too many people roll in and think they're gonna learn something about advertising or marketing or media or startups. You're not, you're just not. You're not, just saving you time. And if you do, it's just this much. It's 3% of the equation. Please attack the other 97. Go to every after hours event. Say hello to everybody. If you go into an office where everybody's head down and it's not that kind of culture, figure it out. Hack it, be the obnoxious intern that was too bubbly. And make sure you attach yourself, even if you go into an office, law firm, where everybody's head down, if you see that one person that looks up and gives you a glimmer of people skills, attach yourself to that person. Let them bring you to things. Interns, use this time wisely. Way too many of you go in and you think you're gonna get something and in reality, the magic was sitting right in front of you. And the punchline, my friends, is it's the people. It's the people. It's the people that you meet in that office that go work somewhere else, that are reminded by your hustle and tenacity and good nature-ness and offense and you went for it, you attached for it, you wanted it, and they're the ones that give you the opportunities. This is a very simple world. This is a people world, not the black and white skills you learned this summer in eight weeks. Half of you are gonna get coffee and do dumb shit because they disrespect the youth inappropriately. So please, even if you are in that 50% that's getting dumb shit and coffees and things of that nature, say hello. You drop a coffee off to somebody and they've got a Cardinals pennant and you know something about the Cardinals, say something. Say something about Adam Wainwright. Create relationships. It is the only KPI. It is the only ROI of an internship.