When I graduated college in 2004, I was more confused than the day I enrolled. I decided to intern for a local Congressman to figure things out. 6 months later, I was hired for a full-time position and was tasked with reinventing his intern program. 4 years and 65 interns later, I created a diverse army of well-trained, young politicos many of whom are rising stars in the political world today. And I keep in touch with many of them and continue to get reference requests to this day.
A lot of what I learned back then can be applied to any intern program so let me give you some guidance. Before you start giving them any work, read this list to learn how to maximize this opportunity for both your startup and your interns. Time is of the essence for three reasons:
- They’re excited to work with you and you want to capitalize on this energy;
- The summer will be over before you know it; and
- You want to onboard them quickly so you can go back to your work.
Here are my top 6 tidbits.
- Introduce them. At Social Tables, we have two interns this summer: Julia from Indiana University (on her third semester with us) and Steven from UMD. I make sure to introduce them to the team via email a few weeks before they start. I also intro them on our blog, place them on our team page, introduce them to anyone who comes into our office, and introduce them to other startups in our accelerator. This last part is especially important so that they meet other like-minded interns from other teams.
- Share information with them. I tend to trust people unless they've given me a reason not to and the same goes for our interns. After our interns sign an NDA, we share our company calendar with them, a few dropbox folders that include our deck and marketing materials, and cc/bcc them on different emails to make sure they feel included. We add them on Github and PivotalTracker as well.
- Make them feel welcome. Being an intern is scary. They're entering a new company and have a short amount of time to make a lasting impression. Help ease some of your interns’ tensions by making them feel welcome. Take them out to lunch, invite them to client meetings, and have them shadow you early on. At Social Tables, we started a Potbelly Fridays tradition where I buy the entire team lunch and we eat together.
- Assign them meaningful work. Time and time again I have seen supervisors giving interns busy work to either get them off the supervisor’s back or to give them a sense of accomplishment. For an intern, such assignments can be overwhelming and oftentimes frustrating. To combat this, have a conversation with your interns very early on to learn what it is that they’re trying to get out of the experience. Give them ownership of a portion of your business and include tangible goals. These tasks should include a combination of operational and strategic work. For example, we have Steven (engineering intern) tasked with a summer-long special project that makes him touch everything from API calls to data store.
- Coach them early and often. Interns joined your startup to learn. Therefore it is critical to mentor them (they look up to you!). To do this, first solicit their input on how they would get a task done. After listening, give them feedback on the process they've outlined with relevant frameworks and examples from your experiences. You need to understand how they think before you can tell them what to do. They learn faster that way.
The United States, recently dubbed “Intern Nation” by Ross Perlin (an excellent review of that book can be found here), is known for its unapologetic use of interns. While it can be easy to sit back, relax, and let interns do crappy tasks, doing so will not only do a disservice to your interns but also do a disservice to your startup that can stand to gain from the enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit, and drive.
I hope you find this post useful. Please feel free to drop any comments with best practices that have worked for you!
