Work experience is a bit like puberty: painful but unavoidable. It’s not easy to prove yourself when you have no experience and no one trusts you to do anything interesting, but a successful internship can lead to CV points, contacts and even a job. Just don’t do what these poor souls did.

Make a bad impression before you start. Sonja Stockton, the head of graduate recruitment at PricewaterhouseCoopers, which recruits 1,200 students a year, has lost count of the interns-to-be who phone up expecting a personal service. “They call and say ‘Hi, it’s Dave, I’m not sure what line of service I’m supposed to be in,’ They assume that I know who Dave is.” Some ask their parents to do the dirty work for them. “We get a lot of parents who ring us as secretaries. ‘My son’s travelling and he needs to return this information, etc.” In a word: unprofessional.

Phone friends from the office. Rajeev Syal, a former reporter for The Sunday Times, didn’t ask for feedback from an intern, but got it anyway. “On the second day [he] came in, put his feet up on the table, picked up the phone then started speaking in a very loud voice about how he was doing work experience for The Sunday Times and how it was really boring. He wasn’t given much to do after that.” Esther Oxenbury, the head of investment banking graduate recruitment at JP Morgan, has seen interns fall asleep at their desk. If you’re bored, don’t show it.

Forget to check important details. A reporter colleague says: “I had a friend who did work experience for an Australian newspaper and wrote a piece in which she quoted a well-known businessman whose name was Mr Burger. She had a brain freeze and in the article she quoted him as Mr Hamburger. Neither Mr Burger nor the editor saw the funny side and she was told never to come back to the paper.”

Pass on confidential information. Alastair Lindsay, a founder of RateMyPlacement, an internship feedback website, was at the Bank of England, where a royal visitor, Prince William, was expected. An e-mail went round the bank alerting staff to the Prince’s arrival. Lindsay decided to gloat to friends at other companies about meeting the prince. “Unfortunately I missed the ‘confidential’ tag on the e-mail and it got flagged by the bank’s security system. I was handed an official warning, and probably labelled a threat to national security,” he says. Press ‘Reply All’ without thinking. A former intern at Jansen-Cilag, a pharmaceutical company, says: “A fellow placement student was arranging taxis for the Christmas party and e-mailed round asking for our addresses. I replied saying that I hoped I wouldn’t need a taxi because I planned to go back with her manager. When my colleagues started sniggering I realised I’d ‘replied all’ to the entire company.”

Assume that your boss shares your sense of humour. Chris Wickson, a fellow founder of RateMyPlacement, recalls: “I was on a placement during the Ashes series of 2006, and a few of us thought it would be funny to get Monty Panesar masks and wear them down to the canteen. A lot of people looked at us with alarm and we realised that to the noncricket fan our light-hearted banter could be taken the wrong way. We were told to take the masks off and given a stern talking to by our bosses.” Ignore a problem. “The whole PR industry is underpinned by work-experience people,” says Justin McKeown, a divisional director at Tri-media UK, a PR consultancy. They are a great help, he says – usually. An intern was asked to fax an important press release. “The next day I realised that it hadn’t been sent. He confessed that he was embarrassed that he didn’t know how to work the fax machine.” If you don’t know, ask.

Think the small jobs are beneath you. “A very important task is cutting out press coverage from newspapers,” McKeown says. One intern finished the job, then left. “When we came to have a look, she had stuck all the cuttings face down. She was quite clearly trying to say that she didn’t appreciate menial tasks.”

Get drunk when you’re trying to impress. Stockton has encountered several interns who spend too long in the bar then struggle to get up for induction the next morning. “I have to go down and say ‘You’re representing PricewaterhouseCoopers. This is not an extension of the student bar’,” she says.

获得工作经验有点像青春萌动期：痛苦但是不可避免。没有工作经验想要证明自己的实力实属不易，没有人会把有意思的事情托付给你去做。但是如果你有成功的实习经验，这些都会为你的简历，人际或是工作加分。所以千万不要效仿以下囧人的做法！

开始时给人留下极其不好的印像

普华永道，每年招聘1200学生实习生。Sonja Stockton，普华永道毕业生招聘的的主管已经记不清接了多少次这样将要成为实习生的人关于需要个人服务的电话。“他们打电话然后说‘喂，我是Dave，我不知道我应该打进哪条服务线，’他们以为我会知道Dave是谁。”有些呢就要求父母为他们干他们不愿意染指的活。“有些就像秘书一样给我们打来电话。“我儿子现在正在旅行，他需要把这些信息反馈给你们，等等。”总而言之：太不专业了。

在办公室打电话给朋友

Rajeev Syal,，曾经是The Sunday Times的新闻工作实习生，从来没想过会得到实习反馈但还是得到了。“工作第二天他进来，将腿放在桌子上然后就开始打电话，声音还非常大的谈论在The Sunday Times的工作经历以及这份工作是如何的无聊。自此之后，就没分太多工作给他了。”Esther Oxenbury，作为一名摩根大通的投资银行毕业生招聘主管，曾看见实习生在桌子上睡着过。如果你真觉得无聊，不要表现出来。

忘记核对重要细节

一位干新闻工作的同事说：“我有一位朋友曾给一家澳大利亚报纸干过。他要在一篇文章中引用了一位名为Burger的知名实业家的话。但是就在那一瞬间不幸脑残，将这位实业家的名字写成Hamburger（汉堡包）。当然这样的事Burger先生以及报社编辑都不会觉得有意思。所以他被迫与报社永远说拜拜了。”

关于机密信息的发布

英国银行，一般去的人都是像威廉王子这样的英国皇室成员。Alastair Lindsay, 实习生反馈站点的创始人曾在此实习过。一封电邮通知所有员工说威廉王子要来。Lindsay决定洋洋得意的向在其他公司工作的朋友宣告这件事。“不幸的是我忘了看电邮上的小标“机密”二字，并且还标上了银行机密系统标志。我被给予了官方警告，并且可能打上了妨害国家安全的标签，”他说。另外还有一种情况就是不假思索的“回复所有人”。Jansen-Cliag，一家制药公司。其一名前实习生说：“一名负责工作安排的实习生正在处理圣诞节聚会的出租车安排并且向每人都发邮件询问我们的地址。我回复说我希望没给我安排车因为我计划与她的经理一起回去。当所有的同事都开始窃笑时，我意识到我已经向全公司告知了一遍。

妄想老板懂得你的幽默感

同是RateMyPlacement创始人的Chris Wichson回忆道：“2006年，在骨灰板球系列进行得如火如荼当中，我们中几个人想如果去餐厅戴上Monty Panesar的面具肯定会很有趣。但结果出人意料。很多人受惊似的看着我们。于是我们意识到对于非板球粉来说我们这种无心的玩笑只会适得其反。我们被告之要将面具摘下来，之后老板又严厉的斥责了我们。”还有就是忽略问题的存在。"整个公关业都被有工作经验的人支撑着。，”英国Trimedia的部门主管兼公共关系咨询师Justin Mckeown说。他们通常贡献巨大。一名实习生需要传真一份媒体发布的重要信息。“第二天我意识到我根本没发出去。他坦诚道实际上他不会用传真机，这令他很窘迫。”如果你不知道，那么就向他人请教。

错误的认为自己不改从小事做起

“将报纸上的新闻报到剪裁下来是一件非常重要的工作，”Mckeown说。实习生做完此工作后，然后离开了。“当我们去看的时候，她把所有的剪裁部分都面朝下粘着。然后她尝试非常明确的说她瞧不起这项工作。”

不要在尝试建立第一印象之前喝醉

Stockton曾几次遇到这样的情况。有些实习生在酒吧呆太长时间而第二天早上必定摇摇晃晃去就职。“我必需平静下来然后说‘你代表着普华永道。这里不是学生酒吧’，”她说。