Have You Ever Offered Summer Internships? Here's Why You Should!

Internship is a Surprising Win - and Easier Than You Think

Like you, I want my team to be engaged, innovative, clear on their mission, and loyal to our company. Above all I want to grow my business, and ultimately, I want to make a positive impact in my community and in our industry. I’ve applied lots of different strategies to achieve these goals, but one stands out as a surprisingly consistent win - our internship program.

Our internship program has turned out to be a surprising source of employee engagement. As a business owner, I work to attract the brightest talent, build a team of A players, keep them focused and energized by their work. Employee engagement is a constantly evolving challenge with big payoff; our internship program has become an important part of our winning plan.

“When the interns are here, everyone is fired up, really clear on our priorities. Some of our best employees started as interns.”

The Win: In preparation for our annual intern season, our employees are challenged to distill and clearly articulate their job, their daily strategies to achieve their goals, and how they contribute to the growth of the company, a process that often leads to fruitful internal discussions about what is important at any one stage. For our team members, there is no greater compliment and responsibility than being asked to mentor an intern, to share their professional knowledge and personal experience to the benefit of a student. For their part, the interns bring an energetic, fresh perspective along with new, sometimes very valuable, knowledge.

The relationships that develop in these working groups sometimes result in close ties that extend the mentor-mentee relationship well beyond the weeks of the internship. I frequently receive emails or handwritten notes from past interns saying they’ve just started their dream job, that that they are applying to graduate school, or getting married. Many of these notes include a word of gratitude for the opportunity that we provided to them. An unexpected bonus is that our internship program has become an excellent farm system to help us hire the best and the brightest young people in the labor market, no small thing in this climate of very low unemployment. In fact, some of our highest achieving employees started out as interns.

The Right Thing to Do: According to the Wall Street Journal, the single greatest factor in employers’ hiring decisions of recent college graduates is whether the student had any real, hands-on employment experience in a business setting. Half of all recent U. S. college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. In other words, a relevant internship makes all the difference in getting a desirable job after college. Many of our past interns report that their internship experience guided their choice of degree major, providing a valuable mid-course sign-post that directs them to a career that they know in advance they are well-suited for, and enjoy.

For high school kids not heading to college, successfully transitioning into the world of work is even more challenging. Some bright kids are kinetic, hands-on learners who are not well suited to learning in a traditional college classroom environment. Over the last 20 years there has been a general “universitization” in America – a paradigm shift to a belief that 100% of students should be on the path to a university degree. We have virtually eliminated vocational training programs in high schools and many of these young people are being left on the educational roadside with few options. By creating internship opportunities, we are onboarding many of these bright, talented young people into our industry on a path to highly-skilled manufacturing career with tremendous growth opportunity. That’s a win-win.

“The single biggest reason I am now in my dream job was my internship at Redline... It opened doors for me.”

Here’s How We Do It: Our internship hiring process eliminates candidates who are not self-directed and able to meet deadlines. Now in our 7th year, we advertise the start of our internship program on social media each spring, this year we received more than 100 applicants in the first 24 hours. Every intern has a mentor in our organization, someone responsible for meeting with them in advance to set goals for their time with us. These goals are well articulated, with concrete parameters.

Planning and organization are key success traits that we work to develop in our interns. Every intern is responsible for communicating each Friday the week’s activities, challenges, and progress toward benchmarks, as well as the priorities and direction for the upcoming week. These proactive Progress + Priorities emails give us an opportunity to give direction and feedback, oversee many interns at once, and correct course as needed. This process helps the interns to develop professional communications skills, be thoughtful about their projects, become more self-directed and to plan well.

We want every intern to come away with a tangible achievement, with new knowledge about their area of interest, and with insights into the larger professional world. Once or twice per week one of our team members speaks to the intern group for 30 minutes. Some of our topics this year included Job Interview Skills, Marketing 101, and Entrepreneurship. We also expect our interns to make a contribution to a real world challenge in our business, which they do. In other words, no one is making copies or picking up laundry for us. Our interns are paid; we believe that they deliver value and we expect that they will treat their internship seriously, which they do.

All of this, of course, costs time and money. But compared to other initiatives and relative to the benefits, starting an internship program is simple and low cost. The benefits extend well beyond our existing organization. This program has helped us to build a fast-growing organization with dedicated, high performing, engaged employees. This program has made a positive impact on our immediate community and has been responsible for introducing many bright, hard-working young people to our industry. Ultimately, this program has been instrumental in helping dozens of young people launch promising, productive professional lives. Is there any bigger win than that? 

Alex Parker is the Executive Vice President and an owner at Redline Detection where she spearheads strategic growth initiatives including new markets, new products, and new partners. Located in Orange, CA, Redline Detection is the world’s leader in diagnostic leak detection technology for automotive and heavy duty applications and is proud to partner with Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, Tesla, GM, BMW, Caterpillar, Volvo, and others.