You Have a Summer Intern, Now What?

So, you agreed to take an intern from a local university this summer to help with the student's supply chain and general business education. But what do you do with them all day long for a few weeks?

The purpose of a student internship is to provide an experiential learning environment and hopefully for the intern to earn some extra cash in the process. To have a successful internship for the student, and at the same time provide benefit to your company, investment by both parties is required.

At the Reshoring Institute, we have hired 17 interns over the past few years from universities all across the U.S. We have learned a thing or two about what makes a great internship and what makes ours so famously popular.

Create a Structure

First, it is so important to plan for and create a structure for the time the intern will be with you. Students are used to assignments, explicit directions, outlines, frameworks, and time frames to complete their work. Start with a structured approach that feels familiar to the intern but consider leaving some tasks and time frames open with some room for creativity. At the Reshoring Institute, we use an on-line project management tool with assigned milestones and tasks. While we give our interns plenty of leeway to complete their research as their school schedule permits, we also have a weekly 30-minute structured conference call with each of them, to track their progress and together solve any issues. We try to create balance between discipline and freedom.

Provide Feedback

An internship is a learning experience and that means there are probably things your interns do well and some things they can do better. Don't be afraid to provide a performance review several times during the internship to provide guidance and coaching. Keep in mind, that these young adults may never have been exposed to a professional working environment and they may not understand business culture. Even small things, like regularly checking their business email account and responding (at least once per day) are important standards to teach. We have also coached students about dressing professionally, typically “business casual,” and sometimes about good manners in the workplace including improving their listening skills. We provide guidelines to our interns as soon as they are hired. They need to know our expectations and understand our high standards.

Writing Assignments

One of the most surprising things we discovered is the university student's lack of basic writing skills. As a result of this discovery, we provide writing guidelines, spend time editing our interns' work, and provide feedback. We make sure our interns know that emails and other written work including spreadsheets, PowerPoint, and other documents represent their professionalism and should be well-constructed and error-free. While these things might seem rather basic, we were surprised to find even graduate students rarely check their work. We now have a policy that anything they write must be peer-reviewed before they submit it to us.

Give them Meaningful Work and Lots of Experiences

A university internship should be more than just a summer job; it should provide meaningful, insightful work that can help a student prepare for a profession in supply chain management. The internship should be designed with as much learning for the student as possible. This means a content-rich experience working on projects that lead to valuable results. The student is at your company to expand his or her knowledge, not to just answer the phone or work the front desk. Take the student on plant tours, invite them to staff meetings, teach them to solve business problems, and expose them to how business decisions are made.
Often an intern returns to your company for a full-time job after graduation. Encourage the student to learn as much as possible. They may become your staff members of the future.

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