The Care and Feeding of Summer Interns

By Scott Irgang

Director of Labor Relations & Employee Engagement, Pitney Bowes

While there are a multitude of articles out there informing, advising and educating young workers how to excel as summer interns, there is a conspicuous dearth of information for managers and leaders on how to effectively interact with this unusual genus of employee. As most companies are beginning to see the arrival of these wide-eyed, ambitious and blissfully unaware workers, I thought it might be a good time to share some pointers and observations:

Forget the hype of “Millennials,” “Gen Z” and other overly broad stereotypical definitions. Let’s just deal with your new summer help:

1)  On Day 1 explain your company’s culture and rules of engagement. Don’t presume that they know what took you three years to figure out.

2)  It may be embarrassing, but as part of their orientation, explain company rules and expectations on social etiquette, personal hygiene, attire and use of company equipment.

3)  On no later than Day 2, their boss should sit down with them and explain the job description and clarify expectations and deliverables. Assignments should be meaningful and not busy-work.

4)  Understand that they don’t realize that you shouldn’t just walk into your new bosses office unannounced and ask direct questions.

5)  They value social interaction, open spaces and team projects.

6)  They don’t really understand appropriate meeting behavior, so educate them.

7)  Coming to work “on time” can be a loosely defined concept.

8)  They can do more complex work than you think, so keep testing their limits.

Push and stretch them, they can take it and will welcome the challenge.

9)  Have some fun after-work activities scheduled. That’s a great way for them to “connect” with your organization.

10)                  Interns should have a dedicated boss or liaison assigned to them.

11)                  Interns should be encouraged to ask any work-related question that comes to mind. They may not seem to be paying attention to your answer but they will remember every word that you said.

12)                  Invite them to meetings above their pay grade. They will absorb a lot and be grateful.

13)                  Introduce your interns to some Senior Leaders and get them some valuable “facetime.”

14)                  Have them work on one project that will take the entire summer to complete and have them present it to you and other leaders during their last week.

15)                  Use the internship period as a valuable and rare opportunity to judge capability, culture-fit and performance. This is a great, low-cost way to recruit future talent.

16)                  Treat them with respect, make sure that you always have an open door for them and watch them surprise you.