A PhD Examined: Internships

Making the Most of a Professional Internship

8 min readJan 12, 2025

Depending on your field of study, you may have the opportunity to go on a professional internship related to your research. Internships offer a great opportunity to learn the practical aspects of work in your field. They are also invaluable for expanding your professional network to help you with the job hunt later.

In this article, I want to look back on my experience with internships, what I learned about them and from them, and some ways to maximize one’s benefit from them. One thing to note is that this article will not likely be useful to you if you’re planning on looking for an academic position after graduation. If this is the case, it is better for you to focus your time and energy on putting out a lot of good publications and applying for prestigious grants.

My Experience

I got the opportunity to go on an internship to a company in my field halfway through my PhD program. They had sent out a mass e-mail to our department soliciting resumes and I sent them mine. A few months later (after I had already forgotten about it), they reached out to me for an interview. Before I knew it, I was being asked to relocate to Austin (where the company was) for the summer where I was to spend the following 3 months working on a project for that company.

I went into that internship with all the confidence of someone standing on the peak of the . I thought I had accumulated a lot of knowledge during my program and was going to wow everyone at the company.

Naturally (and thankfully), I was proven wrong. I found out that I still had a lot to learn. The theoretical knowledge I had to carefully and meticulously reason about was a mundane thing for my colleagues and, on top of that, they had a lot of practical experience and an intuitive sense of how things worked that I still needed to develop. It was a very important step for my professional growth to face these facts and try to learn and better myself.

Additionally, this was my first experience working for a large corporation so I learned a lot about corporate environments and how to navigate a company office as opposed to a research lab. One of the biggest lessons I learned is that companies (especially bigger ones) are much more risk-averse than a research environment like the lab I was working in. There isn’t much room to try out a radical new idea that may end up costing the company millions. As a result, innovation happens incrementally and must be carefully vetted before it’s released into products.

The social aspects of the internship were quite fun. In addition to networking with my colleagues and attending social events thrown by the company for the interns, I got to explore a new city with all the wonderful places it had to offer.

In a nutshell, the internship was a great growth experience for me and I benefited from it in more ways than one. I would have liked to go on even more internships as I felt better-equipped for the next one. As it happened, my advisor wanted me to give more priority to my research after that summer and I ended up not going on another internship.

Since then, I have come far enough along in my job to have managed summer interns of my own, so I feel like I’m qualified enough to give advice on how to handle internships.

When and Why to Apply for an Internship

So should you apply for an internship during your grad program? If so, when do you know you’re ready?

I think the answer to the first question is definitely yes. I know that I mentioned in my introduction that the internship may not be as valuable to someone pursuing an academic career, but that shouldn’t stop you. If you’re mainly interested in academia, you’ll at least gain a different perspective on your work and might even change your mind about your career prospects.

The second question is a little trickier to answer and I think the answer will be different for each person. I think the general guidelines for you to decide when to apply should follow the principle of focusing on your degree first. You should:

Let your research take precedence. If you’re working on a difficult problem or have a publication deadline looming, consider not applying for an internship that summer as you’ll likely not have time to do any significant research work alongside the internship.
Try to finish a major milestone in your research work before going for an internship. This has the benefit of giving you a clear mind to focus on internship work and is likely to make your advisor more amenable to letting you pause your research work for a while. In my case, I had just passed my candidacy exam before going on my internship.
Talk with your advisor to set expectations on what you will be doing during the summer and whether they expect you to still do some light research work in addition to your internship. Remember that you need your advisor’s approval to go on an internship, so you need to sell them on the benefit of doing so.

As for why you would want to go on an internship, I can think of many
reasons:

Learning a lot of practical knowledge about your field and gaining hands-on experience that you won’t likely get in your research lab.
Building a network of contacts in the industry is a very good idea for your future career.
It’s a good preparation for future job hunting as you are likely to get a job offer from the company you interned for if you perform your job well.
Last but not least, money! In many fields, a paid internship comes with a much better salary than what a grad student is paid. If you work in such a field, an internship is also an opportunity to build up some savings to help put you in a more secure financial position.

Considerations for Applying

Based on my (admittedly limited) experience and advice I have received, here are some things to consider when applying for an internship.

Apply to many companies. You’ll likely have to deal with a lot of rejection before you find the right opportunity.
Go on many interviews to gain experience of the interview process and build confidence. It’s a good idea to start by going on interviews with companies you have the least interest in working for. Your first couple of interviews will likely not go very smoothly, so it’s better to get those out of the way before you attempt an interview with the company you really want.
Be honest and up-front about your intentions; if you have already accepted an offer, stop scheduling more interviews. You may see this as more interview practice, but it’s a waste of time for the person/people interviewing you and they won’t appreciate that. Be sure that they will remember that in case you ever end up interviewing with them again.
Seek advice from your more senior colleagues who have already gone on internships. Ask for their insights and help in the application process and for what to do when you’re accepted. As mentioned above, seek your advisor’s input as well.

Handling the Internship

Now you’ve been accepted, how should you handle your new job? I would say the foremost thing to focus on is to keep an open mind and a
(the “belief that [your] intelligence can expand and develop”). This will help you benefit the most from all the learning the internship has to offer.

You should be aiming to perform very well and impress your manager to increase your chances of getting another internship or even job offer. That being said, don’t let this focus scare you away from making mistakes. Allow yourself to fail so you can learn about your shortcomings and your chances to improve. You’ll come out much better for it. Just remember to not be scared to make mistakes and to not fixate on the ones you do make.

You should also try your best to deliver a completed project/product. In other words, even if you don’t achieve all your intended deliverables that you planned on at the beginning of the internship, what you do end up delivering should be usable on its own and deliver value to the team you worked with. This leaves a much better impression of your work than a more complicated effort that ends up being just an academic exercise.

Keep in mind that companies treat an internship like an extended job interview. Most companies will be working very hard to convert you into a full-time hire (unless you didn’t do well during your internship) as soon as possible because they’ve invested time and resources into teaching you. So make sure to have a good relationship with different members of your team and find the right balance between showing that you can work independently and asking questions when you get stuck. Don’t be afraid to bring up the topic of a return internship or full-time position with your manager near the end of the summer.

Finally, if you’re an international student, you should be aware of the restrictions on your student visa regarding working hours and how long you can spend on an internship. I won’t offer specific advice here since each person’s situation is different, but make sure to consult with your university’s international student office to avoid violating your visa conditions.

Concluding Thoughts

Whether you will be pursuing an academic career or a corporate one, an internship is a very valuable learning opportunity that you shouldn’t pass up easily. As long as you keep an open mind and go in with the intent to learn a lot, you will almost certainly benefit tremendously from such an opportunity and get a great head start on the job hunt.