Guidelines for Writing Internship Reports

Objective
Writing reports is one of the most formal ways of presenting the results of a project. Reports can be written about any professional activity including experimental or test results, design proposals, economic or technical feasibility studies and project summaries. They usually follow a major effort on a single topic and are written for review by people involved in decision making or affected by their work. Internship students are asked to write an Internship Report for a number of reasons, including practice in the following: Organizing and presenting a large amount of information related to an issue. Interpreting the relevant information. Drawing relevant conclusions which result in offering recommendations.

Choosing a Topic
Your Internship Report should be based on either a specific aspect of the relevant organization where you intend doing your internship, e.g. HR, Finance, Marketing, or if you get the experience of all different departments then it should be related to the duties assigned at the place of internship with a brief description about each department of the organization.

Style
The Internship Report is expected to be analytical rather than descriptive. It should contain accurate, factual information together with sound arguments and conclusions. The general guidelines regarding the format of the report are as follows:

General Guidelines
The length of your Internship Report should not exceed 20 to 30 pages with 1.5 line space, excluding appendices. The Internship Report should be self-contained (explain any terminology particular to the topic the first time you use it), consistent, and to the point. It should be understandable to the common man.

Use standard formal level of English (no slang or colloquialisms). Use the first person only in the letter of transmittal and in the preface. Use a good quality white bond paper. Start major sections of the report on new pages. Bind the Internship Report in a suitable protective cover. Number the pages: All pages should be numbered properly and the correct number should be reflected on the Table of Content page. Leave margins of 1" on the top, bottom, and sides of each page.

Report Format
The following format guideline outlines the specific requirements of the internship report in terms of the overall structure and necessary sections which are appropriate in most circumstances. There is no strict rule on the length and specific formatting of text. We expect that your internship report consists of three main sections: the preliminaries, the main text and the reference material, all of which are outlined on the following pages. Preliminaries The preliminaries have to include 1.Title Page 2.Acknowledgement and Endorsement 3.Executive Summary 4.Table of Contents The Title Page introduces your reader to your report by listing the following information: report title; organizations name and location; date/year of report; your name, your program & session, email address and the university name. The Acknowledgement and Endorsement on the second page should contain any acknowledgement of assistance and a statement of endorsement, which states that you wrote the report yourself and that it has not already received academic credit from another institution. You can mention the name of any person as well who had been of any help to you in the process of compiling the internship report. The Executive Summary is the most important part of your report. It summarizes the body of the report, outlining its scope, purpose and major findings, highlighting the key conclusions and recommendations. The Executive Summary allows a busy manager to understand the report's significant information without reading the whole text. Write your Executive Summary after you have written the report. It is not enough to state what you are `going to discuss in the report. The executive summary has to be self-contained and must state all the major points of the study. You are not required to discuss in detail how you derived the conclusions or argue about it; this is part of the main body of the text. However, you have to indicate enough details about your study so that a specialist reader has a good understanding of your contributions detailed in the report. The Table of Contents lists all sections and sub-sections and uses the same numbering system as the main body of the report. . Remember -- the preliminaries should not be mentioned in the Table of Contents and must be presented before it. M a i n T ex t The main text has to include 1.Introduction 2.Body 3.SWOT Analysis, Conclusions and Recommendations

The Introduction defines the subject of the report so that the reader is prepared for the text that follows. Here you can outline the company and/or department for which you worked, and you can summarize the work you performed at the company. Setting the background is important because the faculty member evaluating the report may not be familiar with the detailed operations of your employer. After reading the introduction, your reader should be prepared for the report that follows, and remember that a reader will be looking for sections dealing with the operations & issues related to the organization. The Body is the longest part of your report. It is here that you develop your theme by examining the problem, your findings and their meaning. This body of the report should be formatted appropriately with sections and headings to guide the reader through the report. Although every report will have different section headings, there are certain themes which run through all reports - a summary of the data obtained and finally a discussion of the interpretation of the data. In this context the word ``data" can have such different meanings as actual scientific measurements, textbook information, manufacturers literature, plant logbooks, financial statements, opinions of experts or employees and so on. Conclusions and recommendations are often confused but they are not the same thing. Conclusions are derived from research outlined in the main body and do not introduce new material. They may be presented in a sequence of two or three sentence paragraphs. Conclusions may be derived by carrying out the SWOT Analysis of that specific department of the organization where you are doing internship. The conclusions should specifically answer the questions raised in the introduction or conclude how the goals or objectives stated in the introduction have been met. Recommendations are proposed plans of action for the future. They are suggestions following logically from the conclusions. Remember that conclusions deal with the present, recommendations with the future. Each should be presented on a separate page. Ref er ence Materi al The reference material can include 1.References 2.Glossary 3.Nomenclature 4.Appendices References list all those books and journals, and if necessary web pages, to which you specifically refer in your report. Materials from other authors and diagrams that you have not drawn should be acknowledged explicitly when they are first used in your report. The references should follow a well-established and consistent style. It is very unlikely that no references are needed in your report. References have to include links to any information that is coming from external sources. This includes data or any other material on which your analysis is based. Any statement has to be justified. For example, a statement likes The internet is expanding exponentially need to be justified. How do you know that? You have to refer to the source of this information or back-up your statement on your own account if this is a novel observation. In the former case you have to make sure that

you agree with the statement, or state otherwise (in which case you would have to justify your opinion.) If asked about any detail of the report you must be able to answer all the questions or be able to point to the right references. The Glossary is only needed when you have used specialized terms, mathematical symbols or professional jargon in an extensive way. If you have used specialized terms only occasionally, it is acceptable to define it within your text. This same rule applies for the Nomenclature. It is only required if a large number of symbols are used throughout the report. The Appendix (or appendices) provides your reader with supporting information that elaborates on, but is not essential to, the development of your theme, or any information that is necessary to justify your statements and which are too lengthy to include in the main text without interrupting the line of thought developed there. The appendices are identified by numbers or letters. Do not include appendices that have not been cited in the text (Only the relevant appendices should be attached). Note: We expect that the above internship report format will be followed by all the students while preparing their reports. Due date for the submission of internship report is within 30 days after the completion of internship.

GOOD LUCK