What do you do for your interns?
Internship programmes, particularly at startups, have a mixed reputation. Often seen as exploitative particularly in the UK: interns can be unpaid, training can be inconsequential and interns can leave with little progress to show.
At PeerIndex, we've used interns heavily over the past four years and we are reasonably pleased with how our programme has gone.
Here are the elements of our programme:
- All undergraduate or graduate interns are paid: Undergraduate or just-graduated interns receive a stipend, adjusted for any academic or other scholarship they have. The stipend is above legal minimum wage in the UK.
- Internships are of a fixed duration: The internship is of a fixed duration of 12 weeks. After 12 weeks an intern will be offered a job (but it is not always a bad sign that they don't get offered one) or will leave. On occasion we have extended internships, but if we extend internships we will in most case increase the stipend. Few people can afford to live on an intern salary for more than 12 weeks.
- Interns start at the deep end, and we hold their head under water: Interns get a tremendous amount of responsibility very early. Our selection processes gives us confidence in their capabilities. And we believe that they will learn fastest by having to do the work themselves, and working next to motivated people.
- Interns are encouraged to build substantial, meaningful outputs: Interns have developed spam detection algorithms, sales funnel optimisations, written e-books, run client accounts, built internal processes and hired their successors.
- Interns move to where they have strengths: Occasionally we identify an intern as a sales intern but find they are more productty. We don't hang around. We move them to the product team if that is where they will have more impact.
- Seek brilliance: We look for very bright, very committed, interesting individuals. That's a sine qua non. Our interns have normally have top degrees (a first class in their bachelors is common) from top Universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College and the London School of Economics are common).
How successful are our internships?
The best measure is what our interns go on to do next. Our former interns have done well.
- Aaron Cottrell, interned and stayed at PeerIndex for two years. He is now based in Australia where he is a Product Manager at Zendesk, one of the world's fastest growing help desk platforms.
- Craig Hughes, interned in 2012 before taking a full-time business development role in PeerIndex, is now a Product Director at Unruly Media, the world's top viral video firm.
- Ferenc Huszar, interned 2011 before leading our data science team ,was recently hired as the first data-scientist-in-residence at Balderton, a leading European VC firm.
- One thing Aaron, Craig and Ferenc have in common is that they have all been asked to lead the development of new products, as opposed to simply optimise something new. Alpha product people, you might say.
Other interns have left and gone on to be entrepreneurs (an insect restaurant) or get into investment banking, doctoral research, television journalism, marketing and other fields. Our interns have gone to Cisco, Zendesk, UCL, Xerox Research, Stanford, Facebook, HSBC, Bloomberg, Reuters, the BBC and others.
What certainly seems to happen is that our interns multiply their market value through new skills and experiences, many of which they learn with us.
As one of our former interns told us:
'PeerIndex gave me a platform to learn, succeed & stumble.'
I would encourage interns to reference their potential employers and make sure they take internships seriously. As an intern, you'll work blindingly hard (one of our interns commuted 4 hours round trip every day) and meticulously. You'll climb the learning curve. And dive head first into challenges thrown at you.
And I would encourage employers to be very clear about what they really do for their interns.
And so to Olga, Louise, Will, Rebecca, James, Amy, Patricia, Alizee, Franz, Florian, Nick, Amedeo, Neeloy, Robin, Craig, Ferenc, Ragu, Thomas, Silvana and Aaron, thank you.
Photo credit: Former Intern Ferenc Huszar speaking on social influence. Credit: LinkHumans
Digital Content Marketing Expert | Ex-McKinsey
10 年Personally, I believe startups and interns are made for each other. Here's my post about it: https://bit.ly/1tACNl6 I'd love if you could glance through it and give me some feedback.
seller at zhejiang jingyi textile machinery co., Ltd
10 年learn
Writer | Google Career Digital Marketing & E-Commerce | digital marketing | Content Writer | Marketing Specialist
10 年I had a interview last week for a internship and this article was very helpful. Thanks again!
Talent Acquisition & Management
10 年Internships are a great way to start. I stayed a year as a trainee and almost every day was a new experience.
My current internship has given me countless opportunities to learn and develop new skills. While it being paid was essential for me, the things they have let me do has been priceless! Go Steel Technologies!