When surfing interior design blogs this week, I stumbled upon Design Sponge, a Brooklyn based design blog. I noticed they had an article on having interns in your small business and it peeked my curiosity. What did others think? The general consensus is interns are great! …If you know what to do with them and how to get good ones. So, where do you get them? We always get our interns from schools and an occasional email request. Often, local schools and colleges will have a staff member dedicated to helping students find internships and are always interested in learning of new opportunities in the community. Some schools will require a written curriculum of what the intern will be doing when they are in your office, which of course eats up more of your time to write (which you are trying to free up). Interns often have tricky schedules to work around due to their classes. Usually major specific classes are only offered on certain days and those may or may not work in your schedule. Of course interns can be found elsewhere as well – social media is big these days. Put a posting on your Facebook or Twitter page.
To pay or not to pay? Almost all internships, especially lately, are not paying positions. Or should I say, they pay with something much more valuable than the US dollar: experience, knowledge, contacts, networking. Many interns are looking for just that – a industry position they can put on their resume. Interns, for this reason, are great for short term projects. They can show an accomplishment in the field and you can have relief for that time period. Keep in mind that it takes time to train them and they generally don’t stick around after that short time. Most local schools require between 130 and 320 hours for internship credit.
What to do with them once you have them? Of course you had something in mind for the intern you just took in, but what do they want to learn? Interns often have intentions of learning specific things and we, as their sponsors, are responsible for showing them the ropes. I find as the internship progresses, the interns often think of things they would like to learn that didn’t occur to them in the beginning. Be sure to have an agenda, even a routine that they have when they come in everyday and then sprout off new projects from there. It’s nice to be able to come in as an intern and know exactly what to do if you are on a phone call or unavailable. There are always the bland tasks of opening mail and sorting through fabric returns, unfortunately there is no way to avoid doing these tasks – as an intern or a business owner. As long as you are honest about the position upfront, the intern should know what to expect and should not frown upon these medial tasks. Just make sure that these tasks are not the only thing they do or you may not get another intern from that school. Golden rule “never abuse thy intern.”
Hopefully this helps you decide if you want to take in an intern. Speaking as the intern that never left, please take us in, we’re worth it!
Sources
http://www.designspongeonline.com/2010/06/biz-ladies-hiring-interns.html
http://www.entrepreneur.com/humanresources/employeemanagementcolumnistdavidjavitch/article179332.html
http://www.careerbuilder.com/jobposter/small-business/article.aspx?articleid=ATL_0060HIREANINTERN&cbRecursionCnt=1&cbsid=221baddbc4ba43228b863da5dad5dd54-331845462-VL-4&ns_siteid=ns_us_g_hiring_interns%3F
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