How to Recruit and Prepare Your Workplace for a Summer Intern

Taking on a summer intern is a common activity in many workplaces. Internships are a great way for your company to gain the support, input and talent of up-and-coming individuals in your field while providing a learning opportunity to students and making connections with local colleges and universities.

But before you hire on an intern, make sure you are prepared to live up to your end of the bargain. Good interns expect to work hard, but they also want to gain a worthwhile learning experience from their efforts. Take the time to plan and prepare the internship experience in your organization before you bring on a student.

Below are a few of the things you and your organization should do and consider before you hire an intern.

Define the Responsibilities of the Internship

Create a job description and goals statement for your interns. While this may seem like a lot of work for a position that is relatively short-lived, it will enable you to be sure that both your organization and the intern understand your expectations.

Consider the Types of Students Best Suited to Your Internship

Step back and think like a college student or an entry-level professional for a bit. Review the specifics of the position you have to offer, and think about what types of students it would both interest and benefit.

A internship that involves rotating to various areas of your company and assisting at some level with the planning and marketing of multiple projects might be of value to a liberal arts, social sciences or business student, but not offer much for a student majoring in a technical field or the sciences.

Consider students major or minor programs, as well as other coursework they have completed. Think about the types of entry-levels jobs your internship relates to and how it will help a student prepare for those jobs.

Be As Descriptive as Possible in Your Recruiting Materials

Many college students have already been exposed to the world of work. But just as many students are new to both their fields of study and professional life in general. They may have mental images of a summer internship that are much more exciting or glamorous than the realities of your workplace.

While you want to attract talented students with your advertisement and job postings, you also want to be sure you're getting individuals who are aware of the realities of your work environment and ready to face the challenges. A journalism intern who believes she'll be spending her days trailing reporters at breaking news scenes or assisting with local celebrity interviews may lose interest and motivation when she realizes that she's going to be spending most of her time copy editing, writing headlines and composing personal advertisements.

Use the Resources at Local Colleges in Your Recruitment Efforts

Sure, advertising in the local papers and online will probably get you quite a bit of response from local college students.

But taking the time to contact the placement offices at your local colleges is a worthwhile investment. Many colleges will help screen students to make sure they meet minimum requirements before referring them to you. Often, the students who contact you after a referral from their placement office have also taken advantage of other services such as career counseling. This usually means they have begun to define their career goals and know how to choose internships that will move them closer to their dreams, and that they are a bit more aware of what to expect in the workplace.

Be Prepared to Provide Adequate Supervision to Your Intern

The responsibility of supervising an intern can be very different from that of overseeing regular staff members. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the skill level, talent or maturity of your intern, who may in some cases outshine regular employees.

Rather, the extra responsibility has to do with your obligation to the intern. By offering an internship and hiring a student to complete it, you have agreed to provide a learning opportunity. Doing so requires that you closely monitor the intern's assignments and daily activities to make sure they contribute to learning objectives. It means that you or someone else in the intern's area of expertise should be meeting with him regularly to go over goals, get commentary on the experience from the intern's perspective, and provide feedback on what the intern has mastered and where there is room for improvement.

Have Multiple Learning-Appropriate Assignments On Hand for Your Intern

In busy workplaces, planning ahead can sometimes fall by the wayside. But working with an intern makes planning workflows and daily activities even more important.

For example, say this week's assignment for your intern is to participate in developing content for a client's web site. Moving forward is contingent on getting first drafts and data from another department. For whatever reason, that department doesn't come through. Since your deadline for completing the project is still a few weeks away, you aren't too concerned about meeting company goals. Moving the content development back a week won't kill you.

But now, you need something else for your intern to do. The temptation to assign them to a routine task that requires little explanation or training can be overwhelming. After all, you have a million other things to do too. But unless that task will contribute to your intern's learning objectives, that isn't really fair.

Plan ahead to have other assignments on hand that will be of value to your intern, so that when deadlines are shifted and schedules are rearranged she doesn't end up simply being used as office support while she waits for the next opportunity to come along.

Have Contingency Plans for Office Coverage That Don't Involve Your Intern

The receptionist gets sick. One of the data entry staff goes on a two-week cruise. The office has been incredibly busy and the filing hasn't been touched in weeks.

I've heard stories from far too many interns about how they spent their summer answering the phone, doing data entry, and filing instead of participating in the agreed-upon activities of their internship. Things happened, the office was understaffed, everyone else was chasing critical deadlines, and the intern was there and available. No harm was meant, but the damage was done.

Generally, it is fine to expect an intern to jump in during crisis situations, to provide a bit of support to areas outside of his field, and to perform tasks that familiarize him with the overall operation. After all, one of the goals of an internship is to experience first-hand the realities of the workplace, to learn the concept of "all hands on deck," and to understand that there are mundane, routine, and downright boring aspects to almost every job.

But that doesn't mean that your intern should be constantly pulled from other things to make up for clerical and customer service support being out sick or on summer vacation. Have a contingency plan for office coverage that assumes your intern isn't even there.

A well planned internship and a motivated student are a combination that can create a mutual learning experience, productivity, and connections that last long beyond the duration of the job. A poorly thought out internship can discourage students and leave them with a bad impression of your organization and perhaps the field as a whole. With foresight, planning, and an ongoing to commitment to your intern's overall experience, you can make sure your internship opportunity falls into the first category.