4. A five point guide to hiring interns

A sensible and ethical guide to maximising the potential of interns

I was recently asked for advice on hiring interns by a small, but growing e-commerce store in the Netherlands, Pura Patria. They found themselves at the tipping point where the work involved in promoting the store through social media had become more than a full time job for the owner.

In the past I’ve had a lot of experience with interns and have thought seriously about the reasons to hire them. So what started as a 5 minute conversation turned into an hour of talking about the good, the bad and the ugly of hiring interns.

There are many freelancers and start-ups that consider hiring an intern as the first step to growing their business. On the other side, larger corporate businesses hire interns as a matter of course. With so many companies either taking this step for the first time, or perhaps forgetting why they hire interns in the first place, I thought I would share my experience and knowledge of the subject.

The following 5 point guide will present the core issues surrounding hiring an intern. The subjects covered include: Management; Pay; Expectations; Why are you hiring an intern; and The hiring process

1. Management

In general, an intern will need stronger management compared to an employee with existing experience of working in a business environment. She may be unaware of what she can and can’t say. She may be shy to give her opinion, or he may get confused by company / industry jargon.

A good manager should be there to support them in their first steps into a business environment. Encouraging opinions at the right time, taking time to explain processes and why things are done in a certain way, setting weekly goals, ensuring that downtime is scheduled for learning, and ultimately acting as a mentor.

Acting as a mentor is a difficult job, and one that I struggled with when assigned my first intern. My expectations were too high, I was too impatient and our relationship soon broke down. Neither me as a manager or him as an intern got much out of the six week internship.

It wasn’t until after the internship that my boss asked me what I did wrong as a manager. After a heated debate in which I defended my actions whilst putting the intern down, I came to the realisation that it really wasn’t the intern that was the problem. It was me… and I had let the intern down badly.

To be a good manager that inspires, motives and gets the best out of people is a difficult job. This is intensified with an intern because they are looking to you as a mentor, someone who is going to push them to be better and ultimately help them in their career.

I improved my attitude and management style with subsequent interns, but I always remember the realisation I had after that first intern. The lesson here is to be prepared for the task of managing an intern. It takes a lot of effort, but it can be incredibly rewarding if done right.

2. Pay

This is the big issue and the most contentious one. Some companies are unscrupulous at exploiting interns for an endless supply of free labour.

Many companies will justify unpaid internships with false words like “it’s great exposure” or “you are lucky to have this experience”. But, unpaid internships represent a major flaw in corporate thinking. You expect an intern to work hard, learn quickly and slave away to make your company more profitable. To make the conscious choice not pay them is just unacceptable.

There are certain industries that have never paid interns. That doesn’t mean you can or should continue that way unchallenged. Change happens and usually for the better. We don’t send children to work in factories. We give workers recourse when injured at work. We provide annual leave, a maximum working week, maternity & paternity pay. Things change and an intern’s pay is just one of those changes that you have to accept as an employer. Or to put it another way:

If you are hiring an intern for free labour then you are a dick.

You may think I’m being overly fractious on this subject, but here is why:

Unpaid internships create a poverty trap for a huge amount of society. I know better than most, I grew up in a very poor community in the North of England. If it weren’t for several companies giving me a small pay packet for internships, I could not have afforded to continue through university. I would not have obtained my first job and today, 15 years on, I would not be helping large corporate companies achieve success with their online business strategy.

It all has a knock on effect. Short sighted companies who do not pay their interns will suffer in the long run. Unpaid internships only attract one type of person — the lucky few who are supported by someone else’s money. I have nothing against this type of person, but when your entire office demographic is made up of one type of person you lose diversity, innovation, conflicting opinions, all the things that keep a company at the top of their field.

Poorer interns try to make it work, but time and again they end up either dropping out, suffering from stress, or just performing poorly because their mind is on how they are going to pay the rent.

Paying an intern means you will get a motivated worker, who initially may lack a bit of experience, but will make up for it with energy and enthusiasm.

I’ve been asked a number of times what an intern should be paid. Honestly I have no idea, it depends on your company pay structure, but what about minimum wage as a starting point?

On the smaller scale, if you are an owner of a start-up and not taking a wage for yourself, that does not mean people who work for you should not be paid either. This is your vision, not theirs.

If you are an intern who is unpaid, then shame your employer. Head over to Intern Aware and let them know (you can submit anonymously).

3. Expectations

I’ve met many companies that take the expectations of an experienced employee and apply it to an intern. This is not fair and is not going to help either party.

An intern’s skillset will grow the longer they work for your company. The first 1–3 months of an internship may not provide the returns you expect as an employer. Training, the learning curve of the industry, and settling into a working routine can all be a huge challenge for an intern.

After the settling in period, the intern will start to provide a return on investment if managed in the correct way and given clear objectives and a progression plan.

Don’t expect interns to be able to do things that you can’t, even if they have “studied” the subject at university. If you can’t do your own content marketing / web development / accounts / etc. then it’s very unlikely that an intern will be able to do it to an effective standard for you. Even if they can do it effectively, how would you know?

Menial tasks are not what an intern should be doing all day either. Dumping low skilled work on an intern is just another example of exploitation. If you want a data enterer / button counter / watcher of drying paint / etc. then hire someone on an appropriate contract for that. An internship is about giving industry exposure to someone who wants to make a career out of it one day. They should be doing jobs that either you or your employees would be doing otherwise.

Any internship you offer should have the possibility of becoming a full time permanent job. That doesn’t mean you have to offer a job at the end of it. However, it should be a role that could be created if there was budget available for a permanent employee. If there is no possibility of a job then the internship is probably meaningless in giving the intern a leg up in the industry.

The intern will have expectations too. They will expect to be treated fairly, to gain relevant experience, to feel like part of the team and to not be excluded because of their inexperience. These are all expectations that you should look to tackle before proceeding with the hiring of an intern.

4. Why do you require an intern?

This may seem obvious, but a lot of companies make this mistake. An intern can be a great asset, but what are your reasons for hiring them? We’ve already discussed poor reasons for hiring them:

• Free labour
• Having a minion for all the menial tasks
• Providing a skill set that doesn’t already exist in your company

All of these are terrible reasons to hire an intern. So what would good reasons be? Here are a few:

• Give back to the community
• Provide industry exposure to young potential stars
• Train the next generation of employees
• Increase you company reputation
• Gain reasonably priced labour
• Moulding a brand advocate that will sing your praises, not just now, but well into the future

I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons, but when it comes to hiring an intern please ask yourself these two questions:

• Who is going to benefit from this? If it’s only yourself then time to rethink
• Is this morally right? Would your parent / partner / friend be proud to tell others about your hiring terms?

5. Hiring

So, we have all of our policies in place, have good contractual pay terms, have a good manager lined up and have a progression plan. Now we can finally start to think about hiring an intern to fill the position. That is easier said than done sometimes. If you are a big name employer then this isn’t so much of an issue, put a few adverts out and the candidates will find you.

What do you do if you are a small business or in an unsexy industry. That’s when you have to be a bit more creative in your hiring style.

First and foremost a good job advert will go a long way to inspiring candidates to apply. List the reasons that you require an intern and how your position will give them great exposure, a foot on the career ladder and a bit of cash in their pocket.

My favourite method is to stay local and try the collages and universities. Generally the institutions will be incredibly helpful. They may even help with contractual terms, point you in the direction of government subsidies and try their best to get a cross-section of students applying.

If that isn’t working, then take to Twitter and Linked In. These two networks are full of great candidates looking for internships. Don’t get bogged down in a global search though, you still need your intern to live locally and to turn up to your office for work.

Check out local communities and groups, the primary members might not be interested, but you never know who has a friend / daughter / nephew that would love an opportunity at your company.

At the interview stage I suggest a relaxed interview format. The candidates will not be model corporate employees for a few years yet, so you need to cut them a bit of slack. They may clam up under direct questioning, use inappropriate language or just be a bit too relaxed for your liking. This doesn’t mean they will turn out bad, it just means they aren’t used to an interview environment.

I find the best way to figure out their potential is to set them a small task before the interview. This can be a small piece of research or self-learning task that takes a few hours. At the interview it gives you something to talk about and shows you how much effort they are willing to put in.

The final piece of advice I have are the best candidates are the ones with huge amounts of enthusiasm and motivation, not the ones who may have a bit more experience so will need less training.

Summary

I’ve written at length here on the subject of hiring interns and I hope that it’s given you something useful that you can take away.

In my opinion an intern can be a great asset to your company if hired for the right reasons and under the right conditions. It is up to you as an employer to make the most of the opportunity to work with these incredible young people.

In the end, it will be the effective internships of today that will mould the business leaders of tomorrow.

If you enjoyed this article please share it on your favourite social network so others can learn from it as well.

Originally published at ofkris.com.