Skills to develop after an engineering internship

Note: This is an abstract from the post published on ThinkingThrough blog.

It’s the end of summer and soon our interns will be heading back to school. They have demonstrated their skills, completed their project, and delivered an amazing presentation. Before we say our goodbyes, the only thing left is to share feedback on their performance. After that, we wait in hopes for them to join the team and the company as a full-time employee.

So in this post, we focus on the last feedback. The most important feedback of the internship.

My feedback consists of two parts. The first part focuses on their internship. The second part focuses on what they can improve to become an all-round engineer. Let's go over each. 

The first part is backward-looking. It contains complete 360-degree feedback about their performance as an intern. This includes feedback about their work. Their collaboration with peers. Their ownership of the task. And any other metrics around their core skills such as programming. Things they did as an intern.

The second part is forward-looking. Its a list of soft skills interns can learn and develop while in school. Soft skills are as important as core skills in becoming a great engineer. They are a major part of day-to-day engineering work. Developing these skills at school is cheaper and has no cost of failure.

The biggest advantage of the second part is realized when they join as full-time employees. Having developed those soft skills in school gives them a huge edge over their peers. After joining, they can focus on developing work-related skills. The soft skills help to speed up their growth. They win by excelling at work. Company/Team wins by having an all-round engineer. It's a Win-Win.

As a result, the last feedback is more effective and stays actionable post-internship. 

The detailed list of recommended skills and why they are important is published here.

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