Managing Interns
A friend asked for my advice recently regarding leading their new intern. Details matter, but here are some thoughts on starting off.
Internships are investments
Internships are long-term investments from both sides. You'll not get spectacular, immediate returns from adding an intern to your team -- but their efficiency will increase, they will bring new ideas, and you get to practice leading another person who thinks differently from you.
In other words: focus on growth as a measure of success, not short-term output. Make sure your intern understands this as well.
Remove unnecessary ambiguity
An intern is new to the company, sometimes new to working in a company (which is very different from academic assignments), and maybe even to the professinonal area. They will be dealing with this at the same time as learning technical/professional stuff. They also "don't know what they don't know", so proactively feed them information.
- The logistics of the office. Meeting schedule, in-office expectations, Slack channel etiquette, toilet location.
- How can they get information? Go see Jane about technology Foo, she's the expert.
- Help navigate the culture. Ping Jane on Slack first to share context, and send them a meeting invite in an empty slot in their calendar.
- Talk about collaboration vs individual work. Give an honest try to resolving your own questions, but don't stay blocked for more than 2 hours. Ping X, Y, Z with questions and show what research you've done already.
- Technical quick start. We'll do a code walk and a documentation walk together to get you started.
Find a project
You want something self-contained; interns aren't equipped to deal with three other teams or wrangling stakeholders. If there's no single project to be had, a set of tasks can be fine, but the more fragmented the work, the harder it will be for them to reference later.
The work should connect to what the team is doing; it should be achieveable within the timeframe; and it should be something meaningful (see right below).
Set the context
Why is their work important? After Pink, Purpose is one of the three main motivators for people. Let them see how their work fits into the big picture. Why do customers (or stakeholders) care about that task being completed? How will they be able to tell if their work is being used?
Share what the everyone else is working on from a high level, and include them where these things are shared. Encourage questions directly to others, and the chiming in with ideas too.
Set the expectations
By making expectations explicit, you're not just helping the intern/report, but also clarifying the expectations in your own mind. One of the many N levels of delegation frameworks can be helpful. For example:
For this task, I want you to first create a plan in a document, such as a bullet-point list of what you will do. We'll discuss the solution and then you can execute. Please tell me immediately if you're blocked or unsure. Share your work and ask for feedback early if unsure -- the goal is to get it right, not that you do it all alone. Can you do it by tomorrow?
FWIW, reviewing plans is a useful tool in general, and often a good source of discussion.
Build trust
I like meeting new joiners more frequently than standard, so that we can figure out how we work together. This doesn't need to be a time sink: a few minutes over coffee every day (or even more often) ensures that communication is flowing and delays/blockages are kept short.
Example questions:
- How are you feeling in general?
- Who did you talk to, is anyone being particularly helpful or unhelpful? What did they tell you?
- What's the current step in your project? Explain to me how you're solving it.
- What can I do for you?
Back it off as they become more established. Or not, if it's still useful!
During your conversation with others, ask for feedback on interactions.
Review
Your company may already have some framework; if so, use it. But like every project, an internship should also have a retrospective at the very least about:
- What was achieved (vs what we set out to do)?
- What did they learn?
- What did go well?
- What should we do differently the next time?
Document your own take (with input from the team) as well as the intern's take.
What happens next?
Are they getting hired? Going back to school? Moving to another team, another company? Make decisions, and if appropriate, reach out again when hiring (and use the review from above to ensure a good match!)