Intern is a noun, not a verb

The Oxford dictionary defines “intern” as

noun

A student or trainee who works, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification.

verb

Confine (someone) as a prisoner, especially for political or military reasons.

Unfortunately, there are a few people who consider “intern”, a verb. Even those who don’t, they take “sometimes without pay” phrase too seriously. Another important thing to note is that internship is mostly requirement for a qualification which makes it a formality many times. Institutes have a tremendous pressure to send its candidates for internship either in industry or academics. At the same time candidates also face the heat. We tend to use interns as contract workers that makes internship a bad experience. In some cases, students who have finished degrees are hired as intern and they are forced to sign contracts for a year or more so they become bonded labor.

Intern doesn’t mean cheap labor

One thing which I have learned lately is that if you give people any chance of ambiguity they will choose something that benefits them the most. For example, contract labor law says that every contractor can be employed for temporary period. But the law doesn’t define what it means by temporary which makes every company to use their own definition. Similarly the definition - “sometimes without pay” doesn’t specify what is the meaning of sometimes? Sometimes means not regularly. But, how irregular could it be? We will have to change the mindset that intern doesn’t mean cheap labor. We have to treat interns as our future employees. How we treat them today will decide their future plans and our business.

Of course, not every company is VMware (#1 company for interns; average salary for intern > $6,000 per month) and not every company can afford to pay hefty paycheck to each intern. But is it too difficult to pay some amount which can make an intern afford a room, food, commute and some pocket money for books etc.? Am I asking too much? Can you provide some accommodation? It could be a room in student hostel or a room in your guest house or some serviced apartment. Does your company provide free food? Can you provide free meals two to three times a day? It would be nice to consider the average living expenses in the city where your office is.

Don’t “use” them for your business

One of the arguments I normally have with people is whether you should hire intern to get your work done. And it takes a lot of energy to explain that one of the primary objectives of an internship is to get the real work experience and not to get your work done. How many times have you heard somebody saying, “We can get an intern to do that?” Is it possible to change that mindset? Once I was having the same discussion with one of my friends and he said, “Man! We are not doing charity.” And I was a bit speechless for a few minutes. Yes, we are not doing charity, but internship does not appear to be a business either to make money. If you think internship is a business then start charging for it as many companies (they call themselves company) do. It’s difficult to understand and make someone understand that internship is the bridge between academics and industry and the quality of this bridge may decide the future journey. A good internship would act as a good business in future for any organization.

Do you have an orientation plan for them?

If you ask your organization whether they have any orientation plan for interns, the first answer would be that they have a lot better things to do. Why is it so difficult to get interns in a group of say 10 – 12 from different colleges with diverse backgrounds - Finance, HR, Programming, Software Testing, User Interface development? Can you ask each team in your organization to design a project for six months with clear milestones every month and with a complete plan for 3 – 6 months with perhaps a work breakdown structure? Can you present/discuss these projects during pre-placement talks so that interns understand what they are expected? How many of us go with a list of projects and hire interns according to our requirements and their interests? Or can you allow interns to go through an orientation to see what’s happening and what interests them more to design their internship project?

Do you have a training plan?

The most important question is how much percentage should be on the job training and how much for actual work. Do you have a training plan again with proper planning with milestones of achievements every month? How rigorous is your training because if not interns may lose interest? There is a huge difference between what we learn in school and what we do in industry. How many of we learned to use any project management tool, tasks assignment, status update during internship? There is a scope to learn a few commercial tools or even open-source tools like Bugzilla and Redmine. Another advantage during internship could be to learn processes. It could be agile software development frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban or XP? There are few other important things to learn which can’t be learned elsewhere such as work culture, team-work, ethics, and professionalism during internship.

Do you have any metrics for hired interns?

Though not a big fan of metrics, I always wonder why there are no metrics associated with internship. For example, how many interns should be hired every year? Is there any minimum percentage requirement for a company to hire intern? Should there by any? If there is not, how are you preparing the next generation to be ready for the company? If you are planning to hire ‘n’ number of people next year, how the number of interns hired corresponds to your ‘n’. How many interns are absorbed after their successful internship? Is it captured somewhere? What skills did they have when they joined? How many skills did they acquire during their internship? Do you have a skill map? Are they prepared for the industry after internship? If yes, how much are they? Did the internship bridge that gap? Do you have any tool which can answer these questions? I hope Dr. Arun Krishnan (CEO, nFactorial Analytics), who has many products for HR Analytics, would be planning some analytics tool for that? Something like n!Tern for Intern Engagement?

If a plant is nurtured properly it will grow to a full flourished tree giving oxygen, shade and fruits forever. Similarly, interns must be nurtured appropriately to thrive in an organization. I feel that my internship in Bioinformatics at IGIB has played the biggest role in my career. Many other who were part of the internship went on to become Vice Presidents, Senior Scientists / Post-doctoral Fellows, Founder & CEOs, Managers, Architects and what not. And I am sure that they would also feel that the internship at IGIB gave a completely new dimension to their thought process.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my current or previous employers.