Score One for the Interns and Two for Us!

I have long been a proponent of hiring interns.  We actually have two working for The Mpower Group this summer,  Allison (entering Boston College in the fall) and Kevin (entering Notre Dame in the fall).  You will hear from each of them this summer as we are requiring them to write a blog post for us (they are scared to death by the way, which is great 🙂 ).  There are so many benefits for both the intern and the hiring company, one of which is an increase in competency.   You are probably thinking that I am referring to the intern’s competency, but in fact, I am referring to the organization’s.  There are many ways to increase competency – receive training then apply the learning to your job, find projects that allow you to expand your skillset, utilize a coach or one way you may not have thought of is “teach others”.   That is where interns can play a critical role.

When you find yourself in a situation where you are teaching someone else, it requires you to hone your own skills.  In addition, an inexperienced intern asks a lot of questions which requires you to think a little harder and find new ways to explain old concepts.   Three years ago we had an intern, Caitlin, that wanted to learn about Supply Chain management and I personally struggled with how to explain it in everyday terms that she would understand.  I reviewed our training material with her and I had her work on one of our case studies but for me it just was not good enough.  Then, just as I was ready to throw in the towel, The Bagel Supply Chain simulation materialized.   It sounds silly BUT we were having an issue in our office with our Bagels (getting them to us on a timely basis, with the right quality, variety, freshness, price, etc.).   We asked Caitlin to analyze the entire supply chain for our office bagels and develop recommendations for improvements.  As a result of this exercise Caitlin learned:

• Consulting Skills – identified the problem, developed key questions, gathered data through interviews, analyzed the data, developed recommendations, and persuaded us to make changes
• Supply Chain –  developed a map of both information flow and material flow from the supplier to the customer (and all the processes in between) and identified areas for improvement
• Change Management – gained an understanding of the key  stakeholders, their issues and challenges and got them to change their behavior
• Managing Priorities – this was NOT the only thing she was working on  . . . .

To be honest, Caitlin learned a lot about Supply Chain by going through this exercise, but so did I.  I had a practical example that I could share with my clients AND I had learned a new way of teaching that was VERY effective – I feel like my intern actually taught me more than I taught her 🙂 !   As another example, two weeks ago I needed help updating some of our training content.  I used Allison and Kevin to add videos, games and exercises (which they were great at because they have been raised in an electronic world).  For them to be effective though, I had to teach them negotiations (since that was the content of the course that need updating).  They asked questions that I had not even thought of which made my training content even more powerful.  For them, they now know what LAA, MDO and BATNA mean, do you? 

 As a side note, our interns are paid (as they should be), where MANY are not . . . . which leads me to the article I read earlier this week that prompted this post: “Former Interns Sue Gawker Over No Pay” – Huffington Post.   I get incensed when I hear about unpaid internships.   I’m not sure where this practice came from but it has been on the rise in recent years.  As far as I know, slavery was abolished almost 150 years ago in the U.S. yet many companies are expecting their interns to work for free.  The good news is that Interns are starting to fight back as is evident in this article.   “Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, internships must meet several criteria — such as the experience must benefit the intern and the employer derives no immediate advantage from the work provided — in order to classify as an unpaid training program”.  What I find to be really sad is that companies are really missing out if they don’t take advantage of what THEY can learn from their interns.  What I suspect, though, is that they ARE getting all the advantages of having an intern but just don’t want to pay for it.

If you are in the practice of hiring interns, and you should be, take advantage of the experience by increasing YOUR competency along the way . . . . .  

Please join in the conversation . . . . . . .