The secret to a successful internship program
An internship is a time when a student or trainee will gain a lot of knowledge and experience. It’s not only a stressful and educational phase for them, but for the employer as well. In this blog post, we will give you: YES—the employer, tips about how to best approach and handle internship programs for your workplace. Laika welcomes a few interns to the Laikaverse yearly, and we’ve learned a trick or two along the way that worked for us. Besides the workload, daily tasks, collaborating with colleagues and managing clients, one may forget the time and attention an intern actually needs. Understandably, it’s not always easy to manage the internship process. After reading this piece, we hope you will have gained more ideas to better manage this process and offer new interns a successful internship program! Let’s prepare you for a rocket launch towards internship space!
First, finances and HR
First things first—there are laws and regulations governing having interns within a company. Before you start the process, it’s important to have an overview of what rules you need to comply with, within your country. Since our company is based in Germany, we can share with you two of the most important rules for German companies.
In Germany, it makes a big difference if the internship is a mandatory part of studies or if it’s a voluntary internship. When it is mandatory, the internship can—but doesn’t have to be— one that’s unpaid. Any voluntary internship, longer than three months, must be a paid one, at the going minimum wage (€12/hour).
Another important thing to factor in is health insurance. Students can stay on their parent’s health insurance plan until their 25th birthday, but only as long as they don’t earn more than €520 a month. If students earn more, they need to pay the health insurance amount by themselves (around €133 a month for students).
Second, get on the same page
What do you want the intern to accomplish? How do you see the intern fitting within the team? What is and isn’t allowed? What are their (daily) tasks going to be? These are four important questions that you need to answer very specifically before the internship program starts. Both parties have their own set of expectations and objectives for the upcoming months. Without both parties laying these on the table, much misunderstanding and frustration can occur.
Communication is key to avoiding all misunderstanding. A simple tip to avoid this is to create a document with key and relevant questions. Both you, and the new intern, should answer these questions before the internship starts. Doing so will help you determine how you see the intern fitting in the company. But even more importantly, you will also get to better understand the intern’s expectations and how they see themselves fitting in. This can create opportunities for connection, while ensuring that there are fewer disappointments and frustrations during the internship.
Don’t forget to sit down and discuss the answers together, this way you can ask for further explanation if necessary. We have drawn up a checklist, which makes it easier for you to ask the right questions and get the answers you need.
Set clear goals and evaluate them through the internship journey
From the meeting above, you as an employer will get a better understanding of the expectations and goals of the intern, and the intern will better understand your expectations, as well as company expectations. Translate these expectations into clear goals that the intern can strive for and achieve. Be sure to use SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound. For example, these goals could be:
By the end of the internship, the website should include new content created by you: 10 blog posts, 10 new videos and 2 new interviews.
Post 5 Facebook posts about the company and/or our clients every week.
What is the growth of the intern? It’s important to evaluate the SMART goals drawn up together once a month. By having this conversation, you both know where you stand and whether things are going as expected. You can start this conversation with a simple question: “How do you feel about the internship so far?". Then, look at the goals you have drawn up together. “Have some already been achieved? How did the process go? What did you learn from it, and what would you still like to learn?” The goal of these regular evaluations is to gauge how the intern is doing, if they are receiving enough support, and see if you need to adjust some goals, or set new ones.
Finding a space buddy
A buddy is a person whom the intern can go to with pressing questions about policy, the company, and basic internal rules, or to ask for help with the coffee machine (very important!). Questions always arise during the onboarding process, so interns can feel more secure knowing that they always have a buddy to go to, to answer their many questions. In addition, an intern will receive so much information in the first few weeks, that some things may need to be explained or shown (again). Don’t forget to pair your new intern with someone you feel can best help the intern learn and grow as much as possible.
Weekly calls (connect to the top one)
Arrange a weekly call between the intern’s manager and the intern themselves. This call is a weekly check on how the week went and what the intern would still like to learn and has already learned that week. This will help you know whether you are both on the same page and whether the intern needs new, more or fewer tasks. Several Laika interns indicated that this is very important for them. Not only did this make them feel seen by the senior employees in the company, but it was also a time for open communication and feeling heard. A must if you ask our (former) interns!
Remember, in order to create a successful internship, communication is key! Goals and objectives must be aligned, and having regular conversations are crucial. After you used the checklist to answer key questions and formulated SMART goals, designating a special buddy who can help the intern with their questions is important.
Are you ready to take off after reading this blog? Let's hope that these tips will start to help improve your internship process. Know of someone searching for an internship in the comms cosmos? The Laika crew is always on the lookout for bright young stars who are ready for a PR adventure in space. Read more about how this could look like, according to our former interns, Noelle, Moby, Annalena,Lisa,Kaya and Melani. They can contact us by email: jobs@laika.berlin. And who knows, maybe we'll see them in our spaceship soon.