How we manage our super interns
About the Author: Deepak Goel, an MBA alumnus from NMIMS, Mumbai, is the founder of Edu4sure, an educational platform for students. He has trained more than 200 students in digital marketing in 2016 and shares his experience of working and managing super interns.
I did my internship during my MBA. It was in one of the world’s best companies, but it was not worth it. I just used to have super breakfast & lunch and spent my time on Facebook. My manager was always busy and whenever I asked him for work, he had only one line to say, “Do more research on topics and rest we would see.”
This memory was a good experience when I started my own venture. I knew that interns have a hunger for learning and not for the free food.
We hire interns in almost all domains ranging from technology, sales & marketing, and content writing. These interns are passionate learners and stay connected with us even after their internship because they value our efforts to provide them a good learning experience. Our interns work like full-time employees; they are given all the important tasks. We have only 4 full-time employees and all other work is managed by freelancers or interns.
Our two cents on hiring and managing interns:
1. Interns are very cost effective and if we value their time, they can bring really great results. So we must value their time & efforts.
2. We highlight all our interns in our events and on our blog. Every intern has been of great value to our business and we make it a point that they get their due – not just in the form of stipend but a strong online presence too. We have a program for our super interns as well in which we provide free workshops & training at our Noida office.
3. We always have the required documents ready so that the hired virtual interns can understand the work, company culture, and how they can complete their tasks in details. This way we make sure we provide a great learning which keeps our interns motivated.
4. We offer full-time opportunity after a good performance during the internship. Two out of our four full-time employees have completed a great internship tenure with us.
Running an internship program is not always easy; there are problems too. We are a bootstrapped venture and so the only problem which we face is the low salary offer as compared to MNCs/well-funded startups. Many of our previous interns are now working with big companies. We are happy to have a small team and are going to continue with this model of hiring interns & freelancers because we aim to be profitable. In case we decide to raise funds from investors, we would surely hijack all our super interns back.
Looking to run your own internship program? Please post your requirements here.
