Ronny Turiaf has played nearly a decade in the NBA. A current member of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Turiaf has made millions in his NBA career and won a 2012 NBA title with LeBron James and the Miami Heat. But he is still preparing for life after the NBA and that is why he is one of 14 interns working for $13 an hour at Minneapolis-based Olson Advertising. Turiaf is working with Olson Engage in the company’s public relations and social media departments, the Star Tribune reported.
Turiaf sees the value of learning skills beyond the court. And at the same time, the executives at Olson understand the value interns can bring to the company, and have put a conscious effort and strategy in place by hiring a team of 13 summer interns, all with a wide variety of duties and responsibilities.
This is proof that internships are still a viable option for both job seekers and employers.
The movie The Internship features Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as down-on-their luck sales professionals who are seeking a change. They end up obtaining internships at Google, competing against much younger – and tech savvy – interns to win a full-time job at the tech giant. While this type of scenario was made for the movies, it proved a point that company’s large and small are still using internships to help tackle real-world projects and as a way to train, develop and find talent before committing to full-time employment.
Many large companies invest time, money and training resources in interns. Companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, ExxonMobil and Cisco are known for their highly-involved internship programs. But you don’t have to be a large, multi-billion dollar conglomerate to develop a successful internship program. Small employers can benefit from interns and any company looking to find that dedicated worker with the entrepreneurial spirit can add value to its workforce through a dedicated internship program.
Those stereotypical internship programs that show the intern doing nothing more than getting coffee and donuts? Forget about it. That’s another made-for-movie stereotype that doesn’t cut it. Today’s interns are involved with cutting-edge projects and making an immediate impact.
If your company has an internship program in place, or if you are considering an internship program, these tips from Bob LaBombard, former CEO of Avenica, can help get you started in the right direction.
LaBombard has more than 30 years of business experience in the chemical, environmental, professional services and staffing industries, including 18 years of staffing industry experience as CEO of Avenica, Inc. and founder and CEO of EnviroStaff, Inc. LaBombard and Avenica help employers identify their workforce for the future through a staffing model proven to be effective in reducing entry-level turnover and delivering long-term retention. They also put together an outsourced college recruiting model and help employers implement efficient and cost-effective hiring programs.
“Internship programs are a very cost effective way to evaluate potential hires for future full-time, entry-level positions,” says LaBombard. “Successful internship programs should be designed to provide significant value to both the intern and the employer.”
Here are some of the key components of top-notch internship programs, from LaBombard:
Structure
- Identify Meaningful Work: While most internships are relatively short (10-14 weeks) and some projects/tasks may not be appropriate for an intern, internships should focus on meaningful work that will provide value to the employer and contribute to the student’s education and development. Most importantly, internships with meaning will enhance the experience of the intern and leave a positive impression about your company.
- Define the Position: Like any other position you might hire for, define the duties and responsibilities of the internship and write a formal position description. This will help you think through what you want the intern to accomplish and give you a basis on which to evaluate the intern when the internship is completed. The most common internships are those in finance, accounting, marketing, sales, information technology and a variety of industry-specific areas such as underwriting in insurance or credit analysis in a financial institution.
- Develop Training Materials: If duties and responsibilities are clearly defined, training materials should be easily developed. Given the targeted scope of most good internships, the intern should be able to become functional with a week or less of training.
- Identify a Supervisor/Mentor and Peer: One or two people may fill the supervisor and mentor roles. LaBombard recommends that the roles be split if possible in order to enhance the experience for the intern. The intern will benefit from learning how to interact with a supervisor who is responsible for their performance and development. A mentor, on the other hand, is typically a subject matter or industry expert who can provide the intern with valuable knowledge that will help her/him understand their role and why it is important. A peer, typically a younger employee who may have participated in the internship program when they were in college, can help the intern feel comfortable and act as a resource for asking questions about office etiquette and other areas.
- Provide Feedback: Periodically during the internship and during an exit interview, employers should provide performance-related feedback to the intern. The intern will benefit from knowing what they have done well and where her/his efforts have produced concrete results. In addition, it is important that the intern also hears constructive criticism on areas where they can improve.
Recruiting
A common mistake often made by companies is to use an internship program to give summer employment to the children of employees, clients, vendors and other partners. While these resources should not be totally ignored, recruiting for internships should be completed in a way that complies with the standards you have established for filling full-time positions. Among other things, a plan should be established for generating applicants, evaluating resumes and selecting candidates to be interviewed, who internally will conduct the interviews, and what attributes, skills, and experiences will be used to make the final selection.
“Given that your goal is to get meaningful work done and vet interns for potential long-term hire, you don’t want to compromise your standards in the recruiting process,” says LaBombard.
Compensation
If you are truly designing internships to perform meaningful work where the intern is adding value, the intern should be paid. In other words, if the work being done by the intern would otherwise require that you hire a full-time, temporary or project employee or outsource the work to another firm, there is no question that the intern should be compensated. The idea that the experience the intern is getting is adequate compensation is, in LaBombard’s opinion, grossly unfair.
Here’s an example. A common internship in the sales area is for the intern to identify leads, perform outreach to the leads identified, execute telephone follow-up to answer questions and, ultimately, schedule a sales meeting for an experienced sales person or senior executive. This is a critically valuable function because it gets top sales people and senior executives more opportunities to close business.
“In my own business, this type of position has generated some very nice clients resulting in significant new business,” says LaBombard. “How could this success not be compensated?”
Depending upon the industry, position, and geographic area, most internships will pay $10-$20 per hour, with the average being $12-$15 per hour, says LaBombard.
While most companies focus on hiring the recent college graduate to fill intern positions, savvy employers should keep internship opportunities open to job seekers of all experiences and backgrounds. There could be real value in finding a budding star who has other work experience but seeks a career change. You can’t teach transferable skills like communication, interpersonal and relationship building and finding these eager and experienced workers who you can train and take under your wing can be a winning scenario for employers. These are also called returnships.
Returnships are internships for older professionals, returning parents, transitioning military and the long-term unemployed, says John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of global outplacement and business coaching consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
“Employers are consistently wary of employment gaps brought on by a layoff, parenthood or some other life event that prohibits working,” says Challenger. “A returnship for former or transitioning professionals with otherwise sterling employment records, but prolonged unemployment, solves this issue.”
If you have issues in your workforce an internship can often be the way to fill in skill gaps, develop and train emerging talent and complete or develop new programs or business goals filled by interns. It takes time and commitment, but an internship program is still worth it and can add value to any workplace.
Even NBA players like Turiaf are returning for internships. Employers still find value in internships – and so can you and your company.
