It’s Friday, Friday…

It’s a Friday afternoon.  Most of your colleagues’ office lights are off except yours and your supervisor’s.  So unless they say so, you’re basically stuck until when you’re scheduled to leave. If you don’t have too much work, you’re probably thinking, “Why the heck am I still here?” Because that’s life. Here are some things to do to pass the time while also being productive.

• Ask your supervisor and other colleagues if they have anything for you to help with.  Become involved and take initiative to find work and maintain a productive mentality via helping your colleagues.
• Read the company news feed.  It may seem superfluous but it’s important to be in the know when it comes to internal news about the company, upcoming events, lunch n’ learns, and other handy news.
• Knowledge gain. Read up on the company and see how they’re performing against competitors.  You can never know too much about your company and how they are performing against others in the industry.
• Acquire new skills and hone the existing ones. Want to brush up your Excel proficiency? Watch some tutorial videos on how to do something with Excel. Want to learn to format your spreadsheet a certain way? Research “How To” webpages. Want to be gung ho and learn a new programming language? Grab VBA for dummies! Some companies even provide classes and training onsite for skills that will be relevant to your everyday work.  Help the company by helping yourself.  Always want to grow. Always work to grow.
• Relax. Grab a drink, stretch, or go for a walk.  You may be experiencing idle time now, but you never know when the next project will be upon you and when it does… you will be ready, young grasshopper.

Enjoy your Friday!

_ r a w

*Cue epic entrance theme music

You can call me Rachel! I'm currently enrolled in my last year of university, studying how to make using Microsoft Excel, financial statements and calculators look sexy; as well as using that output to make the company I work for look sexy to others. I just started my first downtown job a few months ago and am slowly getting use to not being able to sleep in until 2 in the afternoon. Keyword: slowly...

This is my second and last work term and I plan on absorbing as much information as I can before this contract is up. When it comes to work, I like to get things done as quickly and accurately as possible. No one wants to hire a slow and inaccurate person to lower productivity in this hustling and bustling world! So stay tuned for lots of tips and tricks to improve the efficiency of your work!

When I’m not excelling at excel (teeheehee), I enjoy riding my motorcycle in the summer, snowboarding in the winter, and playing dodgeball in between.  I love experiencing and learning new things; rarely ever say no to trying something new (unless I am deathly afraid of it – like eating bugs. I would never eat bugs). 

Knowledge is power and the more we know, the better we will be at achieving what we want in life and being able to use our attributes to pave our way to success.  We hope our blog will assist you in your quest for knowledge and the pursuit of success.

Cheers,

_ r a w

Curt's Overview

Hey, my name is Curt.

Rule #1: Networking is key, if they know you, they will hire you.
Rule #2: Don't burn bridges, if they hate you, they won't hire you.
Rule #3: Become a crutch, make the department lean on you.

Kat came to me with the idea of starting a blog to help teach other interns how to improve their operations in the competitive grind I call the office place. The aim of this blog is to assist white collar, post secondary educated go-getters who want the inside track on making a foot print during their summer/winter/whatever it is - work term. With that said, this blog is here to teach you three things; excel skills, etiquette, and enterprise knowledge. If you posses these, you will either A. get offered a full time job post your intern, or B. have no problem finding employment elsewhere afterward. That's the end game isn't it?

Work experience during my three interns range from equity research to risk management with a few things in-between. If you ask me how I think interns should represent themselves I'll simply say; by working hard, developing strong enterprise related knowledge and of course by getting your colleagues to enjoy your presence, if they don't then good luck using them as a reference in your pursuit of full time employment post-post secondary - never underestimate the power of networking.  

My part time hobbies include work, working on getting better at work, and getting better at getting better at work. You should have the same ambitions if you want to make it in this 300 applicant 1 selected intern recession ridden North America/Euro/Asia pacific world we will in... Australia we hate you. But seriously, this blog is here to help give you the edge in the work force, if you can become a crutch of your department then they have to lean on you. 

Cheers,

Hello my name is .... Katherine

Wondering a little about us and why we are doing this blog. Well my name is Katherine. Went to University, got a couple degrees, work the downtown grind for the past 7 years, love snowboarding and I am also a budding photographer... if I do say so myself.

I like excel, VBA, modeling in excel, creating cool formulas that make you say... nicccee! I like SAP, and having systems speak to one another..... I like knowing my work has little to no human error because I knew how to put a quite "check" in a file, I like making my work simple, easy and free from repetition when the next month rolls around.

So if you ask me the purpose of this blog...... all the things I like ...... and blogging to let you know about them, whether you already knew and it is just a reminder or if it is something new to you.

enjoy!

Katherine

Intern Learn Begins

Welcome to Intern Learn.

This is the official digital notebook, scratch pad and dumping ground of key learnings, tricks & tips, cool stuff and things we have discovered that we would like to share. These learnings have made tasks simpler, easier and faster  .... or we have found them to be just plain neat.

So, here we go!

Katherine, Curtis & Rachel