Internship Programs
We are in the early stages of developing a structured internship program that will give students the chance to work in a few different departments over a one semester internship with our company. All departments would be connected in some way, even if to the student, they look totally un-connected. This program will be geared towards students who have not settled into a major or who are excited to learn all areas of the business. It would begin with a company overview and end with a day with the CEO.
Does anyone have a program structure similar to this that could offer some advice. I'd love any kind of feedback out there! Thanks!
Comments
Meet with local college internship directors and get their suggestions.
You will also want to develop evaluation forms for both the interns and their managers to gauge how the program is working.
And be sure to these internships are paid; makes life easier.
First of all let me say that you are ahead of the game here. Many companies hire interns and just stick them with someone and don't have a structured program for them. The first suggestion is to make sure you have someone that is in charge of this program. This will be the person the interns can come to should they have questions or concerns. The next suggestion is to have a outline of all that you want the intern to learn. For the internship programs that I have been involved with and help developed, the goal of the internship was to hopefully hire the intern after graduation and this person would have a leg up on our business. If I had someone that was doing a management internship then I made sure that he/she saw something from every department in our organization. As a manager of a particular department, you often have to interact with other departments so it is important that you understand all there is to know about the organization. After you have a list of what you want the person to learn you can make a calendar of what the intern will be doing on a particular day and who they report to during that time. This just makes sure that the intern is not sitting around with nothing to do and that the managers know when the intern will be in his/her department.
I hope that helps. It is difficult to type everything out and explain in detail what I am talking about. If you want to have a further discussion let me know.