3 reasons our interns don't make tea or do filing

Like we need reasons ... but here we go:

1 - Interns' thirst for knowledge makes them a force for change

Internships can be adventures, or horror stories. Our interns, for the most part, get the former, despite the hard work. About 50 start 12-month paid internships each July in teams such as Finance, IT, Quality, Legal, Marketing and Communications. Their work meaningfully moves the business forward, helps them learn new skills and gain valuable experience. With a two week hand-over from the prior year's interns, they hoover up knowledge, persistently ask questions, sit perplexed by the complexity of some of our systems and processes, and often enough ask:

"Really? Is that the best way to do that? It's the 21st century, you know."

Therein lies "intern gold"... challenging the status quo, asking the questions that go unasked because "that's how we do things around here", poking, prodding, and getting things done.

Raveena Mehta interned in our global communications team: "I drove the ‘Meet the Team’ campaign, wrote newsletters, internal stories and quarterly reports, edited presentations and videos. I learned that my questions are valuable, that it's ok to be wrong, as you learn and grow stronger."

2 - Interns have deep insights into the needs and demands of the next generation of employees, help managers place bets, learn to let go, and are a pipeline of future talent.

Far from being inexperienced and na?ve, interns help us think about what kind of employer we want to be. As young professionals, sometimes in their first paying job out of university, or in a "sandwich year", they have a very different view of the world and help us understand diverse opinions on everything from the gig economy to the value of a liberal arts degree. They arrive, sometimes expecting to make tea, but instead, we load them up with responsibility. Sometimes an intern is assigned to a manager early in their leadership career, and this helps the manager develop the ability to trust and take a risk on promising talent, to let go.

Tom McPherson supports our Digital Marketing and E-commerce team, and got a whole lot more than he bargained for: "The responsibility so early on, is what I’ve valued most. Though daunting initially, it pushes you to learn and develop to produce real value."

Tom volunteered to stay on through the summer and help with preparing our website for transition to a new brand. Sweet gig, and you never know... I have lost count of the number of interns we have gone on to hire into permanent roles, either at the end of their year, or once they complete their degrees. What's not to love about a year-long interview process that really lets each side suss each other out, and that brings fresh thinking and learning into the team?

3 - They teach us about, and connect us to, our business, and they keep us young at heart

Interns don't disappear into the business teams we place them in. The program makes sure they network among each other and get access to leaders. This in turn builds an additional informal network across different parts of the business: they bring insight from IT into Marketing, from Finance into HR and so on, often at the levels that it is most needed. Sometimes, if you need something done outside your span of control, your best bet is to work the intern network.

Hannah Jones worked on SEO among other things for us and says: "Working across two teams doing both creative and data-driven work, has given me exposure to various areas of marketing. This year has been both challenging yet exciting."

And, as if that is not enough... joining us so early in their careers, with so much ahead of them, as they learn, they may not realise, but they teach us too. They show us that we should never to be daunted by the task ahead, no matter how insurmountable it may seem, and that courage in workplace comes in many forms.

"My ideas were always heard and I was never afraid to voice my opinions. The hardest was not being scared about how big a company GE is and how many people I would be working with globally," says Raveena Kaur, who supported our Research business's marketing team.

Now, with the new 2019/2020 class of interns a week or so in to their tenure, I am excited to think what they are going to teach me and my colleagues in the 12 months ahead.