OldSoully said:
So I'd like to pitch a proposal to our owner on creating a summer internship position for qualified Aggies. The reason I would like to do this is because I worked for this company while in college and it provided a lot a valuable experience for myself (business major). Additionally, the current management team is spread so thin that this could provide us with some relief even though there would be frequent turnover for a internship position. I also think a young college student could provide us with new ideas.
For those that have experience with an internship program, could you give me some insight on the advantages and disadvantages you experienced?
You need to make sure you have clear and appropriate projects and work for an intern to do. That inventory list needs to be done prior to establishing an intern program. If you don't, an internship can be more of a burden to a manager than help and it isn't a value adding proposition. Additionally, you need to make it as a potential feeder into a full time job or you won't get good candidates. We tend to focus ours on building easy things and such in MS Office products with some exposure to day to day operations. If you don't have those projects laid out, you are going to assign them to managers who don't have time to figure out how to use them and it is just a crew of coffee and lunch getters and nobody (including the interns) will be happy with that.
Focus 1 needs to be inventory of what your managers are doing to pitch this program and really quantify how much of that is below their pay grade so to speak.
Interns can be value-additive and knock a lot of things out for cheap and provide fresh ideas... but quality really matters to them so you need to show you guys have some skin in the game developing them (beyond just salary). They do require more investment than you'd think from managers and teams in order for them to add value though.
