REthink Wine Blog

It’s that time of year again when students are looking for summer work and we could all use the extra help. But really, how much effort is it to manage a summer intern? It shouldn’t be too challenging if you structure it right and plan it now. Considering that I have worked as an intern and have managed many interns, I thought I would share some of my observations to help prepare for the summer. I’d love any other suggestions that you may have.

First off, what does a potential intern want?

• Experience that they can put on their resume
• The opportunity to learn new skills
• The satisfaction of having contributed to something meaningful
• Some form of compensation whether a stipend, in kind goods (rent/meals/wine), or an hourly rate. Not everyone can afford an unpaid summer and there are enough companies willing to pay, that you may miss out on a superstar if you can’t provide some type of incentive.

With this in mind, think through what you need help with and then create a “program” for your intern(s). Below are a few tips and questions to consider:

• Who will manage the intern? I’d recommend one point of contact so the intern isn’t the “catch all” for everyone. With that said, you could structure a rotation program where a different department/function manages the intern for a 2 week period. In our situation, we may have our interns rotate from Client Services to Client Development to Channel Development and then Product Management.
• Interns definitely need structure. Discrete projects are a great way to keep them interested and challenged. When I was a college intern, all too often I was asked to do filing. Woohoo! The key is creating projects that balance what needs to get done (filing or data entry) and projects that are more compelling (research on potential trade prospects or establishing an online presence for you within wine 2.0 communities). Also, ask your interns to craft a project of interest to them and have them continuously work on that and then have them write up the results at the end of the summer.
• Definitely create an evaluation mechanism to assess your interns and have them assess your internship “program.” Your written evaluation of the intern will provide a great recommendation for future jobs or internships. Their assessment of your program will help you better structure future programs if you decide to continue.

In my mind, interns are a fabulous way to offset resource constraints because they can make strong contributions and their rates are discounted. More importantly though, hosting an intern is a great way to excite someone about our industry and teach them tangible skills that will accelerate their learning. Who knows, your former intern could one day become your future employee or partner or boss! Stranger things have happened.

P.S. I almost forgot, if there are any readers out there interested in an internship @ Inertia, feel free to email me directly.

Cheers,



This entry was posted by Andrea Johnston on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Resources and Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.