Becoming An Outstanding Employee
How my internship taught me to become an upstanding employee in a new work environment. These include Strategies and perspectives that I have learned.
The How Group is a mid to large sized Philadelphia-based real estate group. How was founded in 1998 by Gary Jonas with the main goal of providing and leasing student housing in the University City area. Today, How is a multi-level one-stop shop for real estate, offering construction, property management, property investment opportunities and property acquisitions. Furthermore, Hows properties can be found in a multitude of Philadelphia neighborhoods such as, Port Richmond, Fishtown, and Manayunk just to name a few.
I started working for How in the summer of 2024 as a porter. My job was making sure properties were operating correctly and met company standards. By the Fall of 2025, I was able to secure a new position with How, as a marketing intern. As a Marketing intern my job is to help with anything marketing/advertising related along with helping everyday operations run smoother by completing projects that may be time consuming for higher level employees.
Through my internship, I’ve been able to have many takeaways that I see helping me in my future endeavors. These takeaways include small details, such as how to organize my day and how to work in an office setting; to larger-deeper takeaways such as how to stand out and be the best employee I can be.
I’ve always taken pride in my work. Growing up, my mom and dad would say cliches such as “Do the job the best you can,” “If you’re flipping burgers, flip them the best you can,” or my personal favorite, “When you can’t out think them, out work them.” Throughout my working career with high school jobs in a supermarket, or whatever part time job I had I always took these phrases to heart and no matter what job I was doing I tried to be the best employee I could be. However, working in an office was a new frontier for me. I was unsure how I could make my work stand out and like my mom said, “Do the job the best you can”. At times, I worried my work was lackluster or wasn’t done to my employer’s standards. It was during these times that I found a new perspective on approaching my work and being an upstanding employee.
I approach my work with 3 factors in mind, these factors being to be precise, timely, and upstanding. Being timely in your work is important. Timeliness may seem obvious but using your time correctly is extremely important. When working in an office, your day can feel unorganized and as if random projects just take your time. To solve this, I found planning out my month, week and day to be extremely helpful. Using tools such as a monthly and/or a daily calendar to keep track of specific deadlines is very helpful. Doing this allowed me to give myself the advantage of not wondering what I had to do on any given day. This also allowed me to be patient with my work, leading to my second point of being precise.
Being precise is something I often worried about. I often wondered if my work was done correctly or if what I had completed would be useful to the company. However, through the practice of planning, I’m able to give projects the amount of time they need and am able to complete projects that I know are spot on. At times where I need to think about what my next course of action might be and/or how I may overcome a hurdle, I’m able to step away and think about them. I also found it extremely helpful to use all resources provided by the company –regardless if this means asking a team member to look over something really quickly or using company provided websites and software. Overall, I’ve found this approach has helped me greatly to ensure that my work is done precisely.
As previously mentioned, I was raised to have a hard working attitude that has led me to take a lot of pride in my work today. With this being said, sometimes being a precise employee isn’t enough. I found myself wanting to find ways to go above and beyond for my employer and wanting to stand out. It was through this that I began working on being an upstanding employee. Being an upstanding employee can look a multitude of different ways and although being timely and precise are a good start, it can sometimes be difficult to show this through mundane tasks like working on an Excel file, making phone calls or organizing files. I’ve found that taking pride in these mundane tasks and truly caring about the work you are doing makes it the most rewarding. Whether this is by adding a pivot table and a pivot chart to the Excel file or by finding ways to make the office files a little more easy for the next person to use, going above and beyond can be extremely rewarding to yourself and your career.
In summary, if you are someone who finds yourself wanting to be the best employee you can be, you should consider being timely, being precise and being upstanding. These three aspects have helped me to get the most out of my internship as a whole and to receive the most reward from the tasks I complete.
