How summer interns can help your business
Finding good people — not just hard workers, but individuals who fit within a company’s culture — to fill positions is often a struggle for many business owners. One way to ensure a steady flow of highly skilled, highly motivated workers is to set up an internship program.
We’ve been hiring summer interns at Jarrett Companies for over 10 years, with a more intense focus in the past four years. We’ve found it extremely beneficial for creating a pipeline to find the right people who embrace our company culture, our values and mission. Social media is the ideal platform to engage and recruit them, as are career and intern fairs at colleges and universities.
A well-structured, enhanced on-boarding process is essential for starting your intern team on the path to success. Start their first day off right by making your interns feel welcome, familiar and comfortable. Introduce them to everyone on the team, and encourage management to engage in conversation, explaining how their roles contribute to the business.
At Jarrett, we have a scavenger hunt for the new interns. Clues are located at employees’ desks, so each intern has an opportunity to introduce him or herself and learn what his or her coworkers do. We bring in a food truck and treat them to a free lunch in early summer, invite them to the company picnic in August and provide various activities throughout the summer to encourage fellowship. This type of social interaction is vital in promoting camaraderie and loyalty.
Once your interns have settled in, determine a specific job function for each intern so they can use their skills and learn something new at the same time. This allows them to produce something of value for the company and contribute to the overall success of a project. Give them some challenging tasks outside their field of study and experience, and empower them to find problems and discover solutions. Since they are new to your business, they may bring fresh ideas to situations that tend to fall back on the same old resolutions.
Have one large project for them to work on throughout their internship, perhaps something that has been on the back burner for lack of urgency or resources, with a specific action-item list, milestones and deadlines. This allows them to develop better time and project management skills.
An internship is a great way to gauge a person’s suitability for future employment in your company. The process allows you both to learn if they are a good fit, not just for a specific position, but also within the environment you’ve cultivated in your business.
The everyday benefits of a summer intern program are numerous. Interns are energetic, enthusiastic, and by their very nature, eager to learn and lend a hand at any task. You can plug them into departments that need an extra hand or an influx of energy, or to cover assignments for vacationing co-workers. And they provide an excellent opportunity for your full-time employees to train, mentor and further enhance their own soft skills.
Michael Jarrett is founder and president of Jarrett Logistics Systems and PackShip USA. Both of Jarrett’s companies have won numerous awards, including the Weatherhead 100, Cascade Capital Growth Award, Inc. 500/5000, The Entrepreneurial Edge Award and NEO Success Award.
