Making your summer internship program a win-win
You’ve recruited college students and are ready to have them for a productive 8-12 weeks in your company. Members of the team have signed up to coach the interns, start dates have been confirmed, and you’re prepared to make the summer experience positive for the students and effective for your employees. So, why are there companies that no longer hire interns? Why have there been complaints by students that they ‘wasted their time’ working at certain organizations? Here are some recommendations to have win-win results from your internship program this summer.
Establish meaningful work. When you hire part-time or full-time employees, you have a clear plan on what role the person will have in the organization and what their responsibilities will be. The same planning needs to take place for interns. This is an opportunity to evaluate the students’ skills and how they could become bench strength for your company. Determine individual and team projects that will utilize their strengths and allow them to build new skills in the workplace.
Make sure everyone understands their expectations. This is crucial for the existing team and the incoming interns. Conversations about communication, organization, and timeliness expectations should happen on Day 1. Interns will thrive if there is a clear discussion around how/when to use voice mail, texts, email, or in person communication. Mentors and coaches should be willing to explain the culture around work space expectations and attendance.
Measure progress consistently and provide feedback. Any employee who signs up to support the intern team also needs to provide critical and positive feedback. These conversations should be two-way so the interns can express concerns, ask questions, and give input to add value to the organization. The best internships give specific objectives at the start and scheduled progress checks throughout. Interns should bring notes with accomplishments and any obstacles they have encountered. Using this process will also make it easier to write a formal recommendation letter for the intern at the end of the internship.
Be open to modifications and honest communication. Even the largest company with a tenured intern program needs to change up the activities from year to year. Once the interns are in place for a couple of weeks, it’s important to ask for their feedback and then modify activities accordingly. Moving interns from one department to another during their summer is a best practice to let the internal team completely evaluate their skills and ability to adapt. Encourage honesty with all members of the team. Showing flexibility and open communication to the interns will provide them the best experience and also produce the highest level of results from the projects you assign them.