The makings of a successful internship program
About the Author: Sunil Gupta, a technocrat turned entrepreneur, is the founder of PlanMyTour.in, a travel website which provides people the option of custom Andaman tours with real-time cost calculations. He provides insightful details about their internship program.
We believe in collaborative working, delegation and combining work with fun. To build this company, we relied extensively on interns whom we hired through Internshala. Around 10 interns come to our office in Bengaluru every year for short stints ranging from 3 months to 6 months. Many of our former interns are now well placed in large organizations with cushy salaries.
Our intern program can be divided into three parts:
1. Onboarding and training
When we want to onboard interns, we look only for horses (because donkeys don’t win). The specific qualities we want in our interns are:
• A never-say-die attitude.
• Good communication skills.
• Smartness and a hunger to learn
• To not be closeted in by dogmas (basically, risk takers).
We believe unlearning old habits is as important as learning new ones and expect it from every intern we hire. The interns’ journey with our company begins with a week-long training period. During this period, the intern is trained on different technologies and formally introduced to his work. We believe, startups need to be patient and should have reasonable expectations when there are interns onboard. It is too much to expect them to be as skilled as professionals since they are still learning. For our part, the most important quality we look for is the hunger to learn.
We are happy to say everyone in our office works at the same table, including me. We think this is important because it makes the hierarchy flat and keeps communication lines clean. Some interns are apprehensive about this arrangement in the beginning but they soon adapt. Our goal for every intern is very clear. We let him know early on that we are only interested in results and as long as you deliver results, you can work however you want. There are no restrictions.
2. How we manage our interns
Discipline is an indispensable part of our set up. Regular follow-ups keep the interns on their toes and motivated. Every intern is assigned a mentor as soon as she joins. At 9.30 am every day, we have a team meeting where we discuss the agenda for the day and set targets. Since most of our work is ad hoc, this meeting is very important. ‘Building a company is not easy’ and this is communicated to every intern to encourage them to finish their daily assigned tasks on the same day. To keep them going, senior members of the team, including me, regularly undertake motivational sessions. We also nudge them to give presentations on their work so that others can see and benefit.
Our interns must take ownership of their work. One unique aspect of our program is that we allow our interns to tag their code and show it to their friends (or prospective employers). Most companies don’t let developers share their code with outsiders. This not only gives our interns bragging rights but also helps them in building a portfolio.
3. The fun element- How we make our interns comfortable
Our interns come in for a small durations of 3-6 months. It is a very short time to break barriers and build relationships but we have to work with what we have. One of the methods we use to build team spirit among our interns is organizing cricket matches in which everyone has to participate. We also celebrate birthdays and festivals in the office.
Another technique we’ve used with great success is preparing all our food in-house. All interns have to lend a hand in cooking and they can have anything as long as they cook it. We also have an unwritten rule in the office that all interns must get some fresh air every day. To this effect, we encourage our interns to use the gym, swimming pool, and jacuzzi in our office building. We even organize weekly outings to the movies on company expenses.
We also have another CEO (Chief Entertaining Officer) on the premises, an office pet named ‘ISRO’, who keeps everyone in a good mood and works as a stress buster.
In a nutshell, every intern should understand that an internship is all about learning and testing your limits. It is a great way to explore what really interests you and what is best for your career. Interns should not be surprised if they find themselves out of their comfort zone. It is the company’s responsibility to show them how to behave and act in a work environment.
Planning to hire interns for your company? Please post your requirements here.
