How do I plan an internship?

Before planning your internship, you should reflect on your career goals and aspired professional field. The more clearly you understand your expectations and objectives, the better you can communicate your internship goals to potential employers.

To generate ideas for a suitable internship, it's helpful to be aware of your strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. To discover these, we recommend starting your planning with a short self-assessment:

Step 1
Start by identifying and visualizing your skills and competencies. Reflect on your previous life phases (e.g. school, university, prior internships, part-time jobs, volunteer work, extracurricular activities, etc.) and list the tasks and topics you’ve dealt with. Highlight those you particularly enjoyed or excelled at and add topics you engaged with in depth. As a final step in this analysis, consider who could offer meaningful feedback on your strengths and weaknesses—people who know you well in a relevant context (e.g. former classmates, colleagues, current fellow students, family or friends). Ask them only about your strengths—this exercise focuses on discovering your key competencies, not on pointing out weaknesses.

Step 2
Summarize the feedback you received in a table or mind map and add your own assessment of your strengths. Helpful guiding questions may include:

• What activities do you particularly enjoy?

• What academic or personal interests dominate?

• Which school subjects did you enjoy most?

Also include assessments of skills such as analytical or conceptual thinking, assertiveness, teamwork, initiative, creativity, communication and willingness to learn. You’ll likely see emerging patterns regarding your strengths.

Step 3
Your next task is to create a self-description based on the key points from Step 2. Start by describing your past achievements—projects, jobs, academic papers, etc.—and build a narrative that connects them to your current situation and future plans.

Step 4
Now explore the various occupational fields related to your degree program and align your self-image from Step 3 with them. Once your self-perception is clearly defined, it will be much easier to assess where you’d like to work after graduation. Furthermore only with a precisely defined profile and transparency on your preferences and career aspirations you have a clear standard to compare any potential job opportunity against for making good career decisions. Beyond this (almost) every profession offers some degree of freedom to shape the role to align specific activities and tasks with your individual strengths.

Once you have completed your self-analysis, you can start developing ideas for your internship. The following questions are intended to support you in this process:

• What areas of work would you like to explore?
• Which skills and knowledge would you like to apply during the internship?
• What knowledge, skills or experiences do you hope to acquire or develop further?
• Which theoretical concepts would you like to test in practice?
• What contacts would you like to make?

For particularly competitive employers, it’s also worth developing a strategic self-presentation to stand out from the crowd. Not only should you demonstrate that you meet the requirements, but also highlight outstanding assets - like international experience, voluntary commitments, soft skills, passion, or relevant knowledge beyond the advertisement (e.g. in AI).

The advisors at the Career Center or your department’s internship office will gladly support you in this process: 
→ www.uni-bremen.de/en/career-center/counselling

Time management is a crucial factor for a successful internship. The timing of your internship is usually determined by your study progress— although your study regulations may only suggest a rough timeframe.

A later internship within your studies has the advantage of higher qualifications, making you more attractive to employers. However, it may be harder to fit in due to final exams or thesis deadlines.

You may be able to closely integrate your internship with your studies by writing your thesis in cooperation with an employer.

An exploratory internship is best done early, between the third and fourth semester of your bachelor’s program. This allows you to align your future studies with practical experience in your target field and focus your development of key competencies accordingly.

Regardless of when you plan to do your internship, allow enough time for preparation. Many underestimate how long it takes, especially when facing delays such as rejections, slow responses from employers or the university, or even having to cancel a poor-fit internship.

Plan at least four months for the application phase. For highly competitive internships, this may take even longer. Start with profile analysis and research in advance.

→ www.uni-bremen.de/en/career-center/counselling/internship-in-germany
→ www.uni-bremen.de/en/career-center/counselling/internship-in-germany/internship-guide

For internships abroad, we recommend even longer preparation. See our brochure ?Wegweiser Auslandspraktikum?. for more details:
→ www.uni-bremen.de/en/career-center/counselling/internship-abroad

To make a well-informed internship choice, you should also consider the essential framework conditions. This includes deciding on the location — where your internship should or could take place. While most internships are done near your university or hometown, it can be worthwhile to explore new regions.

Consider whether you are willing and financially able to live temporarily in another city. You might need to organize housing locally. Also consider financial needs - since not every internship is paid - this can be a crucial factor and should be thought through before committing.

Only once your self-assessment is complete and you have a clear idea of your internship goals should you start your internship search.