Last time I wrote about our internship program and how we approach it in order to give interns a hands-on, real-life experience while they’re with the Bean Team. Over 25 interns come through our office in the last 5 years. We’ve seen phenomenal interns and we’ve seen some not so great interns, so today, I want to dive into what we look for in our interns while they’re here.
1. Treat it Like a Job
Once you get out of school and get a full-time job, you’ll be expected to show up on time, to do what’s asked, and to follow company procedures. We expect that here as well. Like I said in our last blog on this topic, we treat our interns the same as our full-time employees and we expect they’ll do the same! We want you to dress and act professionally, use good judgment, and to work on Transformation Marketing projects while you’re here, not surfing the web or texting all day.
2. Ask Questions
We’re here to help you learn, but a lot of times, we don’t know what you don’t know. We aren’t sure what you’ve learned in school or what might be brand new to you. So, don’t hesitate to ask questions along the way. That’s what your internship is all about! You’ll get out of it what you’re willing to get out of it.
3. Give Us Your Input
Yes, you’re an intern, but you’re also an employee and your input matters to us. You have fresh ideas and a new perspective and we value that. We can’t take every suggestion we ever get and there may be reasons we can’t (or won’t) do something a certain way, or a reason why we can’t (or won’t) add something to a client’s campaign, but there are a lot of times we can (and will), but only if you speak up!
4. Build Your References
If you intend to put an internship on your resume, make sure you made a good impression while you were there. Whether you put us down as a reference or not, your potential employer may very well contact us and if we can’t say you did a great job and we’d love to have you back, we will only be able to verify you were here. (And trust me, employers know what that means.)
5. Give and Expect to Get Feedback
At the end of your internship, you’ll be asked to fill out a review. This helps us know what you got out of your internship and what we can change for future interns. We actually want your honest feedback. We don’t want you to sugar coat it or tell us we did great in every way. We want to know where we could have done a better job for you so we can improve the experience for future interns. And don’t feel like you have to wait until the end to do that. We will give you honest feedback along the way and will summarize and let you know how we felt you did as a whole at the end of your internship. We will be kind, but also honest. Constructive feedback will benefit you more than sunshine and rainbows.
Summing this up, the most important thing is to show up, plug into what’s going on, do the work, and be a pleasant coworker. I’ve literally had employers call me for a reference on our interns where I have told them, “If you don’t hire them, send them back here. We’ll take them back in a heartbeat.” We’ve had so many wonderful interns and we look forward to many more!
Transformation Marketing is a great place to get hands-on experience. As an online marketing agency near Lincoln, NE, we offer a variety of services that can help grow your business – web development, graphic design, social media marketing, search engine optimization, blog writing, programmatic advertising, video production, and much more. Please visit our website or call us at 402-788-2896 to learn more!