Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Interns
As summer begins to roll around, many businesses may find themselves with a new intern or group of interns. If used properly, the experience of hiring interns can be beneficial to both your business and the intern themselves.
Hiring Interns Benefit Your Business
By creating a mutually beneficial experience, interns will bring as many positives to your business as you bring to them. Hiring interns opens the possibility to make connections and relationships through these employees and grow your professional network. The millennial workers that you will most likely be hiring as interns have a new way of learning and functioning.
Because they have grown up in an age of constant communication and technological advancements, these workers are quick learners and skilled researchers. You will likely find that these interns can be productive with a shorter adjustment period to your business’s processes. Hiring interns can help you to recruit your next set of employees. As many interns are students, they will likely have connections with younger students, their peers, and post-grads looking for jobs through their personal connections or social media.
Utilizing their connections and knowledge of the workforce can help you to hire qualified and available employees when you need them. A good intern may also be beneficial to your company long after they graduate. Often, these interns have great potential to become full-time employees. If hired, they will already be familiar with your company culture and standard of work, thus saving you the time of interviewing and training someone else. Hiring interns is a good way for both parties to test out long-term job possibilities.
Interns Offer Results
It is important to do some preparation before your intern’s first day. By getting organized ahead of time, you will ensure that you are giving your intern the most beneficial work experience and that you are using their time and talents properly. Take the time to think about what you are expecting out of your intern and to write an official job description.
Next, write out a work plan for your intern that includes their responsibilities, expectations, and goals for the extent of their hire. By preparing these ahead of time, you and your intern will have mutual expectations of the work they need to produce and something to refer back to when the results are in.
Interns Can Surpass Your Expectations
The first day on the job may be scary for a new intern, especially if it is their first time in the workforce. Make sure that he or she feels welcome from the moment they step in the door. This may involve a set time for orientation and training as well as an office tour and introduction to the other employees. After your intern has gotten settled in, take the time to review the work plan and job description that you created with them.
This will give your intern time to ask questions, give feedback, and even make suggestions based on their goals and talents. Listening to an intern’s skills or suggestions of what they can do for the company can help the business explore different avenues of work and could result in better outcomes for the business.
Interns Will Produce Valuable Work
While it may seem easy to stick interns on office tasks such as making copies and stuffing envelopes, it is more beneficial to your business to use them to their full potential. Their eagerness to learn about the business will result in hard work and their greatest efforts. Ask your intern what his or her career goals and strengths are and then assign tasks accordingly. This will give your intern the best chance at learning and growing as a professional while providing your business with the talents and eagerness of a fresh young mind.
Interns Can Help You Improve Your Skills
The purpose of getting an internship as a student is to learn more about a career and get valuable work experience. As a professional, you have an exceptional amount of knowledge that you can pass on. Try to answer questions, teach lessons, and provide growth opportunities. In turn, you will learn from your intern as well.
These young workers are keen on what trends in the marketplace could affect business and what the younger generations are passionate about. Think back to the time when you were an intern – what did you love about it? What did you hate about it? What parts made you grow as a person and as a professional? Strive to be the mentor you would have liked to have as an intern. This experience will help you learn better management and employee relation skills while giving and gaining knowledge that is beneficial to your business.
By utilizing the talent and possibilities that come along with interns, you will create a mutually beneficial experience. These young employees will learn from you as a mentor and bring a fresh perspective to your business.
