YOUR NEXT GREAT EMPLOYEE COULD BE AN
intern D
id you know that some of the world’s most successful people started out as interns?
It’s hard to believe that goliaths such as Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Dennis Muilenburg (Boeing CEO), Mary Barra (General Motors CEO), Roger Goodell (NFL Commissioner), and Journalists including Brian Williams and Anderson Cooper all got a humble start as interns. But they did. So maybe your next superstar employee could be an intern, too. An internship is a student’s introduction to the working world before arriving. It allows them to get a taste for a potential future career or job. It also allows them to start putting some of those newfound college skills to use. Interns shouldn’t be delegated the tasks no one else wants to do or has the time to do. That doesn’t help them or you in the long term. They need to offer meaningful contributions – not just fetch coffee or make copies. For management companies, a tried and true internship program can be the funnel to a new talent and candidate pool. They also can offer a fresh perspective and new ideas for your business. But to benefit from interns and see a real return on investment, you must see them not as free or low-paid workers, but rather as potential new hires and, who knows, even your next executive leader. You need to approach interns as a long-term investment and create a job description, growth plan, and assign a person or team to manage the program.
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Vision Fall 2021 | cacm.org
