What I learned from my Summer Internship!

No, I was not an intern this summer – I’m far too old for that. However, I had the fortunate opportunity to closely participate in our second year of ArcherPoint’s summer internship program, conducted with the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minneapolis.

During our first year of hosting the internship program, there was also quite a bit of learning—mostly about how to plan, organize, manage, and execute a successful internship program. And I think we did a pretty good job. However, the first year of learning was mostly about how to run a successful internship program, and I fully expected we would do things better in year two.

This second year, we started our planning much earlier, changed how we interviewed, reviewed, and selected candidates, and did much more advanced planning to ensure we had a significant number of meaningful internal and client facing projects ready for the interns to work on. We even invited Clients First, one of our competing partners in the NAV community, to participate, providing yet another opportunity for learning.

I’ve assisted other internship programs in my past work life but was more on the periphery of support activities. Being more engaged in our program this year than last, I wanted to ensure we provided an incredible learning opportunity for our nine interns this year and to make it an amazing summer work experience for them. What I was not prepared for, nor did I anticipate, was how much I would actually learn from them! And yes, I mean very meaningful, practical, and applicable learning from them of which I can directly apply in my job today and in the future.

For example, I did not expect to be exposed to an online training and education software package that might fit our training needs. I did not expect to get excited about writing my first blog with the direct, active assistance of one of our interns, who did an amazing job of taking what I wanted to say and creating an awesome draft. I did not expect to re-learn and be reminded of that fearless attitude, to never say “No” to any opportunity, and to actively reach out to ask for help and welcome the opportunity to share my struggles with others. I did not expect to remember the fun of standing up in front of your team and peers and share your thoughts and ideas or to present a topic of which you have oftentimes little knowledge, as well as the combination of both apprehension and excitement in presenting information and the warm satisfaction of a job well done upon completion. I also learned many new presentation techniques and ideas for presenting.

I want to thank all of our interns (pictured above) for an incredible summer, for doing amazing work on our internal assignments and client projects, for being fearless in attacking each assignment, and for demonstrating true collaboration and inviting and relying on your team members. While I hope and believe you all learned a lot this summer from ArcherPoint, you can’t imagine how much you’ve given back to our team, everyone you worked with, and to me, personally. For those of you considering starting an internship, I highly recommend it.  Not just for your organization and growing your talent pool, but in change you and your organization will experience working with your interns.  Best of luck!