Do interns believe in what your company does or produces?
Not at all likely.48%
Extremely likely.52%
748 PARTICIPANTS
Founder in Services (non-Government), Self-employed
Interns may be among the first to readily embrace emerging technologies as they don't have any fixed views on processes based on years of experience. In addition, as many are digital natives they bring fresh insights to the design process.Marketing Manager in Services (non-Government), 51 - 200 employees
I think my real response would be somewhere in the middle. Many kids feel like internships are a checkbox or requirement to get into their first paying job. Others know exactly where they want to go and most likely only apply to companies that align with their path.Marketing Analyst in Education, 11 - 50 employees
Depends how you inculcate the company goals while the interns are trained.Lead - Services , QMS ,ISMS,OHSMS in Services (non-Government), 51 - 200 employees
Depends upon the individual and role hired for. Also it drills down to how the company culture has set a precedent for brainstorming vision and mission.Infrastructure Manager in Education, 5,001 - 10,000 employees
I work for a Research-1 Land-Grant Institution. Our mission is to support teaching, learning, research, and outreach.Supply Chain Analyst, Self-employed
When it comes to interns, I believe in the following. I had shared it with an intern some time ago and they validated the information.For an internship, the first month is spent "civilizing" the intern. This process entails teaching the intern how to behave in an office and circumstances. For example, just because you are on break does not mean you can access sites that you shouldn't access during work. During the first month, I don't expect much, I do expect the intern to learn where the bathrooms, basic office etiquette etc. The goal during this month is not to do something too offensive.
During the second month, I expect the intern to listen first and learn. Yes, they may have ideas but they should figure out why things are done the way they are and learn about why decisions were made. I understand that the intern may have learned language X in school and are convinced that its great but no one in the office knows the language well and therefore writing code in it isn't great. There is no guarantee that the new intern will understand the code even if they come from the same school, etc. Its during the second month that I expect the intern to get a feel for office politics etc. The goal during this month is not to break things. If something breaks, I expect the intern to let the responsible party know and not paper over any "temporary" fixes even if they think its permanent.
The third month is when I expect the intern to be productive. This is the month when they are supposed to apply the knowledge they learned in months one and two. They should know how to behave decently and how things work, how to get support for their ideas etc. They should have an idea of how what they're doing fits into the overall picture. At this stage they may have ideas etc. and that's good. They should have an idea for how things fit into an overall context. At this point I would expect the intern to be able to write a decent onboarding guide that the new intern can follow. I would still have the intern go through months 1 and 2 but hopefully it won't be as jarring for them.
Typically interns at the company that I work for have to understand what we do and why we do it. It helps that some/many of them are our customers as well or have used our service or similar services. They have views/ideas for improvement but they aren't around long enough to see the output of what they are working on/doing. We do use interns to assist with some projects and we've found that works well. They get a feel for the system that they're working on/testing and how things work. They're also curious enough to ask questions. They are supported by SMEs and other senior staff who are expert enough to know what's going. At its best the experts/SMEs can focus on the big scary stuff and the interns can poke around and do the detailed/process oriented work.
Content you might like
Founder, Self-employed
Work travel is a privilege. Embracing your experience to meet new people, and see the beauty of nature and culture wherever you go.Compliance management24%
New employee onboarding25%
Permissions management20%
Security incident management16%
Alert prioritization & review10%
Other (comment below)4%
1218 PARTICIPANTS
Less than 1 month17%
1-3 months32%
3-6 months29%
6-12 months15%
More than one year6%
743 PARTICIPANTS