How to Design an Internship
Starting an internship program could be overwhelming.
When poorly designed, the experience could be frustrating for both the company and the intern. No one wants an annoyed team with decreased performance. No one wants a frustrated intern spending her time making coffee and running errands.
Still, it doesn’t have to be this way. Here are five things you could do to design a better internship experience for your company and your intern.
Define your scope
To design a successful experience, find a project that it’s non-mission-critical. It could be something that the team has wanted to do but never has had the time to work on. Define a set of deliverables and expectations that are clearly communicated to the intern. Check in with her every week to provide feedback and realign priorities.
Set an onboarding process
Having a clear onboarding process can help an intern feel welcome. This might seem silly but is often overlooked. To create this process, you could start by modifying your existing employee onboarding process.
If you don’t have such a process, just remember to set up the appropriate accounts, give the intern a tour of your facilities, explain the work rules (schedule, meetings, communication channels, etc), and introduce the team members. Documenting this process will allow you to find gaps and set a consistent internship experience.
Assign a mentor
Find an employee within your organization that will commit to becoming the intern’s mentor. This person should make herself available to answer the intern’s questions and provide guidance. To avoid constant interruptions, you could define a schedule for questions, establish a mechanism for communication, and set recurrent meetings. Having an employee willing to take on this role can reduce the disruption for the rest of the team.
Establish an exit process
Allow the intern to demo her work to her team in a team meeting. During this session, her team members should provide feedback, and allow the intern to explain her learnings, decisions, and areas of opportunities. Finally, conduct an exit interview with the person responsible for the internship. During this interview, you should ask her about the onboarding process, the work assigned, her mentor, her interactions with the team, and whether she had a fulfilling learning experience.
Commit
The most important thing an organization can do when starting an internship is to fully commit to it. Creating the right experience could help develop the organizational skills that could then be used to attract and onboard talent. Through an internship program, your team members will practice mentorship, which in turn can be used to accelerate the growth of less experienced team members.
Starting an internship program could be overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be so.
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Jorge Téllez is Director General at CeroUno and Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Turing School of Software and Design.
