Debunking Five Myths About Internships

Truth be told, there are many things I didn’t quite expect upon making it my professional ambition to make internships matter. I thought most everyone knew what I had come to appreciate through my own experiences. Those began with four internships that launched my chosen career and, since then, provided immense benefits and fulfillment of managing and mentoring nearly 300 interns.

There are more “you would thinks” than can be covered at once.

Of course, the core challenge is pretty much the same as the opportunity at hand:

There’s no substitute for experience.

In other words, unless an employer, individual supervisor or mentor has ever had exposure to positive internship experiences, they more often hold some common misconceptions. These same barriers also lead to diminishing returns for those employers that commit to giving it a try, which leads to opportunity erosion.

There’s a certain right way to run internships as well as to manage and mentor interns. Given that’s what we do at the Internship Institute, let’s take this opportunity to refute at least “Five Myths about Internships” that will help employers to realize their full potential.

At the top of the list is a general misconception:

1. Managers don’t have the time to supervise interns.

The reality is that they may not have the time NOT to have interns. Our five-year study on student productivity demonstrates that a single supervisor can gain up to 225 FULL work days of productivity in a calendar year simply by managing interns more effectively than completing certain work tasks themselves.

2. Having interns is too much work for too little in return.

We’ve developed the resources to make it as easy as possible to run an internship program in all the right ways and to get the most in return. The result will yield many more times value than a skilled supervisor will ever have to dedicate. What’s more is that the productivity gained creates a ripple effect that gives salaried employees more time to achieve mission-critical tasks.

3. Finding good interns is a crapshoot.

Maybe so, if you recruit by chance. But, if you apply the right recruitment techniques, you’ll learn how easy it is to find and onboard the right applicants.

4. Internship programs are only for larger companies.

This couldn’t be further from the truth, especially now that we’ve removed the barriers so that a company of one can do it. Take the leap!

5. Companies can’t have interns without office space with phones and computers.

Again, not true; we’ve shown and now make it possible for others to effectively manage interns virtually instead of doing so onsite. This also creates a win-win for participants who value the flexibility that makes it possible to gain that experience.

Overall, the number of internships out there that come close to their full potential remain in the minority. Most employers with internships are either subpar because they don’t know what they’re doing, or they don’t have the tools to do it right and/or they simply don’t know the difference.

The majority of employers without programs either have a blind spot and don’t know what they’re missing or they avoid the opportunity based on the misconceptions above among others.

It’s time for us to fix internships and develop programs that become a strategic business asset that, among all else, home-grow future potential employees and provide exceptional, real-time gains in work productivity, competencies, fresh ideas, and positive energy!

Opportunity awaits!

#MakeInternshipsMatter #BeTheDifference