Fired From Internship

I am a graduate working as an intern while working on finding a full time position. As of recently I have been having 5-6 meetings/ interviews a week (I am paid hourly and do not get paid for the meeting times). Today I had a 9am coffee meeting and a 12 interview, and was texted by my MD (who is traveling for the day): “I think today should be your last day so you can focus 100% of your time on finding a job…….Turn in everything before you leave”

I’m unsure how to feel about this and if this will affect me in the future.

(My last day was supposed to be Friday)

9 Comments
 

I think he meant don't mention you got let go on the resume and just put like Jun. 2024 - Aug. 2024 or whatever the time period was (don't specify it ended a week early)

 
Most Helpful

Your last day was supposed to be Friday? So the MD fired you like 3 days before your last day? My initial impression of this is that it's a petty thing for the MD to do for a temporary internship with no return offer. I would approach this by being cordial and friendly. The MD obviously feels a certain way about you having all these interviews and no plan to remain at the current company, given that they went a petty route. So really the only way to approach this without burning a bridge is talking to the MD on the phone or meeting them in person and just simply say that you:

  1. Appreciate the experience interning at the company / you enjoyed your time there / thank them for mentoring or teaching you along the way
  2. Say that you believe he's right! That you should allocate 100% of your focus on interviewing because the interview process has picked up and you're getting a lot of interest....
  3. Wrap it up and say thanks again and you look forward to crossing paths with them in the industry in the future 

This reframes the situation so that the MD now:

  • Feels like a teacher/mentor/helper to you (hard to dislike someone that you taught/mentored because it's essentially disliking a product of yourself),
  • That you value their advice & believe they are correct (ego boost/ego confirmation)
  • Reminds them that you and them may cross paths (reinforces to them that it's of value to be on good terms with you because you might be doing business together in the future)
 

Classic real estate management style of not addressing issues and then being passive aggressive about it later. A lot of people in this industry can manage a project but very few can effectively manage people. 
 

That said, I will say that unless it was cleared ahead of time, I’d be annoyed if my intern was regularly spending their day out of the office job hunting. I wouldn’t let it slide for months and then be a bitch about it at the end, but there would definitely be a talk at some point. 
 

I wouldn’t stress too much about it though. Definitely don’t need to go around telling people you got fired or anything. Sounds like “the internship just ended a week early so you could job hunt.”

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 

I did the same thing during my internship. Would leave the office and crank networking calls. The company had zero work for me and I knew I didn’t want to work there when I graduated. I probably did 30 calls while working there. Ended up securing a great FT offer and it worked out well whereas others were left behind when the company didn’t give return offers and those that did get returns were laid off 5 months into their FT job. Don’t feel bad for networking when they don’t have work for you.

 

If they let you go now, then they probably were going to do it at some point regardless. It's foolish to think that you would not be looking for a full time job, especially if they were not giving you an indication that they would hire you or provide you with substantial work. As long as you were getting your work done/working well with others I wouldn't stress too hard on this, still list it if you feel confident that they won't give you a bad reference.

 

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