It’s summer internship season, and your office may be getting overrun by interns. If you’re being aggravated by these fresh-faced young people who don’t quite know how the work world operates just yet – or if you’d like to ensure your interns have a good experience in your organization – here’s some advice for helping you all survive the summer with your sanity intact.
Assume you’ll have to tell interns things that might seem obvious to you. Don’t be surprised if your interns don’t know office basics like “take notes when I’m giving you detailed directions” or “don’t text us at 9:05 a.m. to say you decided not to come in that day.” The whole point of an internship is to learn about how the work world works. No one is born knowing how to operate in an office environment, and your interns are in the process of learning it. You and they both will be much happier if you spell out expectations and don’t assume they know what you want.
Some areas to be sure to address up front: how much, if at all, interns can be on their cell phones or social media during the day; starting and ending times for the workday; dress code; and broader cultural norms in your office. And speaking of dress code …
They may not know what business wear really is. It’s not uncommon for people new to the work world to be confused about what “business formal” or “business casual” means. Do them the favor of spelling it out, as clearly as you can. For example, don’t just say “that skirt is too short for the office.” Instead, say “skirts shouldn’t be more than a couple of inches above your knees” or whatever is true for your office. And if you can offer advice on how to dress professionally on a budget, your interns will probably appreciate it.
It’s OK to be highly directive when you need to be. Again, interns don’t yet know office norms – and you, lucky colleague of interns, may be the one to teach them. Prepare to get comfortable being much more directive than you would be with a regular colleague. You shouldn’t hesitate, for example, to ask a noisy group of interns to quiet down because they’re disturbing others (rather than stewing silently), or to tell an intern that she can’t leave early because you’re waiting for her to finish her part of a project before the day ends.
Find out what your interns are hoping to get out of the experience, and do what you can to provide that. Interns are generally working for little (or even no) pay in order to get experience or exposure in a field, and while that usually means getting stuck with a lot of grunt work, it’s kind to see if there’s something specific they’re hoping to do. For example, if an intern is particularly interested in marketing, you might arrange for her to sit in on some marketing team meetings so that she can watch more senior professionals in action. Or if another intern wants to write, see if you can give him some low-risk projects so he ends the summer with some writing samples. Of course, this won’t always be practical. If an intern wants to get experience representing a company on TV, you’re probably not going to let her be your new spokesperson. But within reason, try to accommodate people.
Make sure interns have enough to do. Complaints abound from interns who were given enough work to keep busy for a few weeks and then were left with nearly nothing to do for the rest of the summer. Keeping interns busy takes work and planning, but if your company is bringing interns in, it should provide a full summer of work so they don’t feel their time is being wasted.
Give regular feedback. Too often, people neglect to give truly useful feedback to interns. Sometimes that’s because they aren’t clear on what’s reasonable to expect from interns and thus don’t want to push too hard for higher-quality work. But an internship will be significantly less useful if it doesn’t come with real feedback about the intern’s work. Do your interns the considerable favor of helping them see what they’re doing well and what future employers will want them to do differently.
