Building a Quality Internship Program
Time, effort, and thoughtfulness are needed to build a quality internship program. While companies can differ widely as to how they go about hosting internships, the elements of supervision, on-going feedback, and a final evaluation must be presented in any functional internship program in order for students to benefit from it.
In general, a good internship program should be well thought out. The followings are the essential ingredients that would make a program work both for the company and the students:
Internship work
- Provide meaningful work to interns. It is hard to define what is meaningful. A common rule may be something related to the intern’s career development. However, sitting down with the intern to work out work specifications is always a good start.
- Make sure there is enough work to keep the intern busy. Unchallenging work and idle times are very difficult for interns to handle.
- If possible, provide opportunities for increasing responsibility. This will enable interns not only to learn in their respective careers, but will also provide them with an overview of work process in their short internship stay.
Communication
- Be honest and upfront about the kind of work you can offer to interns and your expectations. This will help to build trust in the internship.
- Make time to give feedbacks to interns. As interns are in a process of learning, positive and negative comments are useful to help interns learn as long as they are delivered in a not too personal manner.
- Include interns in meetings and discussions if possible and if appropriate. This will help them learn in an indirect way. This will also make them feel that they are really part of the company.
- Make sure you give detailed explanations to every assignment that may seem trivial and obvious. Interns are newcomers to your company, learn to be patient with their adjustment period.
- Maintain an open channel of communication with formal and informal meetings.
Supervisors
- Allocate someone who is experienced and who likes to teach to be interns’ mentor or supervisor. Interns will need guidance throughout their internship stay in the company. Good mentoring has been shown to be the chief source of satisfaction in internships.
- Set aside consultation time for supervisors and interns. Unless this can be planned ahead, interns will never have a chance to talk to their supervisors. Never let interns feel ignored. Biweekly one-on-one meetings with the intern are common.
- The supervisor may be the chief role model from whom interns acquire human relations skills, decision-making abilities, and managing office politics. If interns are to develop professionalism in any area, his or her relationship with the supervisor will be primary.
- In some cases, supervisors may need to extend their present company connections to support the success of the intern. This may require purposeful intra departmental or inter departmental liaisons.
Company
- The first step a company can do to properly host interns is to take interns to tour company facilities introducing the interns to other employees. This is a powerful gesture of friendliness and genuine concern on the company’s part.
- To help interns to gain more understanding of the company, provide interns with company and organizational materials to read. Newsletters, annual reports, organizational chart, or memos from the CEO are good materials to introduce the company.
- Foster staff relations by encouraging the interns to have breaks and lunch times with other employees.
- If circumstances allow, offer opportunities for the interns to observe or participate in professional meetings. These are the work scenes that will well complement office routines.
- A good learning experience is to allow the interns to interview organizational personnel and to encourage them to observe and discuss work issues with employees.
- Make sure that the company and related staff are prepared for the day of internship arrival. Some form of welcoming for your new interns is always desirable.
- Interns are not allowed to work from a home office, i.e. under no circumstances students should be asked to work in an office-like set up in the home of any of their supervisor(s) and colleague(s).
- Properly housing interns will demand that the basic office space and facilities are supported on the day of the intern’s arrival. In order for the intern to do the tasks assigned, remember that he or she needs a desk, chair, phone and a computer.
- Reward the interns according to schedule and do not delay to reimburse intern expenses. Interns are not making lots of money, covering traveling expenses, taking them to lunch, and other kinds of non-monetary rewards can be powerful gestures of concern on the company’s part.
Internship Description Checklist
Purpose of internship
Job and training description
- Essential activities/job functions that will be required of the intern
- Any training that will be provided
Time and duration
- The length of the internship
- Required hours of work per week/month for the internship
Internship outcome
- The expectations regarding outcomes of tasks/projects
Department and supervisor
- Departments where the intern will work
- Proposed supervisors
Internship requirements
- physical requirements of the internship if any
- academic requirements
- skills requirements
- work or life experience if any
Application process
- Application and selection processes
- Staff in charge