Tesar-Reynes

I have recently talked to some administrative people in college and postgraduate placement offices. They all seem less than enthusiastic about the opportunities for their students coming onto the job market right now. They say that some of their graduates are now deciding to go on to get advanced degrees while others join the military.

I have always been a firm believer in any and all intern programs. The biggest negative voiced about these initiatives is that they take too much executive time and effort – that in times when staff has been cut to the bone, they clutter and don’t help.

My personal experience with intern programs has all been very positive. We have been fortunate enough to get some very good kids to come in for the summer. We are a small firm. There was no need for a formal training program. We could have someone shadow us until they got enough experience, and then we could assign them tasks and oversee the results.

I think one of the largest shortcomings of any internal program is not a lack of commitment but a lack of ownership. If a mentor is assigned an intern, the intern’s success should be part of the mentor’s own job evaluation. This way, the mentor can’t just brush their intern off.

A quick rant – I see less and less mentoring going on in our industry. People seem to pay lip service to it, but I don’t see superiors being challenged on their ability to bring along their subordinates. I always thought that companies like P&G, GE, Leo Burnett and McDonald’s were the best mentoring organizations, where managers truly cared about the people underneath them.

I honestly believe that industry should commit to a major investment in intern programs. Intern programs more than pay for themselves through the high quality of work their people perform. In a larger sense, just like investing in the country’s infrastructure, intern programs serve as investments for your firm’s future.