kgb18
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Interns
Jul 15, 2013 17:51:36 GMT -5
Post by kgb18 on Jul 15, 2013 17:51:36 GMT -5
Does your company usually get a summer intern or interns? How knowledgeable are they about your field? How competent are they? Are they a help or a hindrance?
We have a summer intern. She is a really sweet girl who is willing to do whatever we need. The problem is that she doesn't know anything. I spend so much time helping her that I can't get my work done. My bosses are stuck here late editing her stuff. It's a disaster.
I honestly don't know how she ended up with us because her major isn't even in our field. My direct bosses are not the ones who selected her. We're in a lot of upheaval right now. Some people (including a high up boss) have been fired. Everything is kind of chaotic, so the intern situation is not helping.
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sheilaincali
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Jul 15, 2013 19:18:51 GMT -5
Post by sheilaincali on Jul 15, 2013 19:18:51 GMT -5
DH's company hires interns every summer to help with the materials and soils testing- some are construction management majors and some are engineering majors. Without fail 90% of them have no knowledge of the job. DH had to explain to a 3rd year CM major how to read plans the other day.
Plus they seem to have very little work ethic. Claim they want "all the hours they can get" and then start whining if you expect them to work any overtime or Saturdays. They don't understand the concept of being on time to work. They'll be scheduled to be at a jobsite at 7am and call at 6:58 to say they overslept and will be there in an hour or so.
DH is always relieved when the school year starts up and they go back to school and stop making his job harder.
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midjd
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Jul 15, 2013 19:30:57 GMT -5
Post by midjd on Jul 15, 2013 19:30:57 GMT -5
Our public information officer almost always has an intern - usually a junior or senior journalism major. They seem to have different levels of experience - some are capable of producing content on their own, some are more of the "hey, can you fold these 50,000 brochures?" kind of interns. But our PIO is so busy that I think if any of them were actually hindering her they'd be gone pretty quickly.
I have a part-time employee and sometimes it can be a struggle to find enough to keep her occupied. The nature of the work isn't really conducive to a regular 10-15 hours a week - some weeks it's 5 hours, other weeks its 20. She's not a law student so I can't pawn off the low-level legal stuff, which would be a bigger help, but it's hard to find a law student who wants to spend 90% of their internship processing invoices.
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Nazgul Girl
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Jul 15, 2013 19:31:59 GMT -5
Post by Nazgul Girl on Jul 15, 2013 19:31:59 GMT -5
My company hires interns, or has interns nearly every summer. Mostly they're college-aged children of the employees. They mostly put them to work doing repetetive inputting, so it works out fine once they get trained by their supervisors. It's evidently so dull for them that some of them don't last the summer even though the positions pay about $10 per hour.
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kgb18
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Jul 15, 2013 20:09:00 GMT -5
Post by kgb18 on Jul 15, 2013 20:09:00 GMT -5
Part of our problem is, we don't really even have "busy work" or clerical stuff that doesn't require training and at least a basic proficiency in journalism. Our intern doesn't even know basic things that I learned in high school journalism. It's frustrating. Instead of being a help, she's a hindrance. I spent so much time working with her last Friday that I had to write from home on Saturday morning because I couldn't get my own stories done. It's faster for me to do things myself then let her "help."
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Miss Tequila
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Jul 15, 2013 20:29:01 GMT -5
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Post by Miss Tequila on Jul 15, 2013 20:29:01 GMT -5
I was in public accounting for 17 years so I had my share of interns. Some were good, some were great and some were useless. But even the great ones took air of my time.
Towards the end of my career in public, we had major layoffs but not a huge reduction in work. We were each working a lot of hours just to get jobs done. There was no room for training unless you wanted to work 60 to 70 hours a week during "non-busy season". I got to the point where I just had the intern shadow me. If I had a three hour client meeting the intern went and was told to take notes. If I was working through a client issue with the CFO, the intern came and was told to take notes.
When I no longer cared if the incoming kids were getting proper training I knew it was time to leave. I do miss making the infer run for my coffee each morning :-(
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8 Bit WWBG
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Jul 15, 2013 20:32:50 GMT -5
Post by 8 Bit WWBG on Jul 15, 2013 20:32:50 GMT -5
My boss won't let me have one. He says the person would be too much of a hindrance. We'd only have him/her for 90-120 days, and by the time they'd learned anything of value, they'd be moving on.
I can break a spirit in 58 days. 32 if I really put my heart into it.
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Regis
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Jul 15, 2013 20:38:38 GMT -5
Post by Regis on Jul 15, 2013 20:38:38 GMT -5
We have surveying interns just about every summer. I only take surveying/engineering/construction/mathematics majors. The one we have this summer is probably averaging 45-50 hours per week. We've not had a bad one in the past 7-8 years.
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kgb18
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Jul 15, 2013 20:39:29 GMT -5
Post by kgb18 on Jul 15, 2013 20:39:29 GMT -5
I'd say your boss is right.
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kgb18
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Jul 15, 2013 20:41:05 GMT -5
Post by kgb18 on Jul 15, 2013 20:41:05 GMT -5
I suspect it was my boss who got fired that brought this girl on. Like I said, she's really nice. She shows up on time. She's very willing, but she has no clue. I think she thought maybe she'd like to be a journalist and is just sort of testing it out on a lark. We need someone who wants to be a reporter and has some educational background.
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tcu2003
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Post by tcu2003 on Jul 15, 2013 20:45:50 GMT -5
We hire interns every summer, and several of them stay on through the school year. An engineer and work at an engineering firm, so nearly all of the interns are engineering students - every once in a while they hire a marketing intern to help that department. They generally start off not knowing anything, but are pretty big helps by the time the summer/semester/school year is over - my team usually gives job offers to most of our interns.
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kgb18
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Jul 15, 2013 20:59:33 GMT -5
Post by kgb18 on Jul 15, 2013 20:59:33 GMT -5
I got my first job through interning in the newsroom, and working in the business office, and working as a writer for the advertising department. I knew what I wanted to do when I was in high school, and I made damn sure to get my foot in the door really early and keep it there.
There just aren't that many kids who really have a passion for print journalism any more. I'm the last of the old school print group. I'm starting to feel old, like I should be standing in the newsroom yelling, "Get off my lawn!" to all the youngsters.
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skubikky
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Jul 16, 2013 6:18:03 GMT -5
Post by skubikky on Jul 16, 2013 6:18:03 GMT -5
We hire interns and co-ops in our software development group. Usually they're good. The tasks are usually low level programming. Of course it takes some time to get acclimated to how we do things(understanding the task, source control, process etc.) but for the most part it has worked out for us. The managers who hire have the tasks very well defined and identify one or two people to help bring the hire along. This iis one way to scout out good talent. Sometimes they come back for additional co-op blocks and get hired after graduation. At that point, they're fulling functioning if you will.
Almost all of them are from Rochester Institute of Technology, any of the SUNY schools or University of Rochester. Typically computer science majors.
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skubikky
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Jul 16, 2013 6:21:24 GMT -5
Post by skubikky on Jul 16, 2013 6:21:24 GMT -5
I got my first job through interning in the newsroom, and working in the business office, and working as a writer for the advertising department. I knew what I wanted to do when I was in high school, and I made damn sure to get my foot in the door really early and keep it there. There just aren't that many kids who really have a passion for print journalism any more. I'm the last of the old school print group. I'm starting to feel old, like I should be standing in the newsroom yelling, "Get off my lawn!" to all the youngsters. Social media is and has been at the forefront. A young friend of the family did her undergrad in journalism and her master in a social media track. After working for a non-profit division of Americorps, just got hired by one of the groups at a big brewer. This kid is very, very saavy. It's an entirely different media and seems to certainly be dominated by the 20-30 somethings.....probably more in the 20 range though.
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Deleted
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Jul 16, 2013 11:48:20 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2013 11:48:20 GMT -5
I could easily come up with some things for a female intern to do, and it would require little training
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Jul 16, 2013 12:00:35 GMT -5
Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Jul 16, 2013 12:00:35 GMT -5
We get summer students. So far I am 3:3 here my bosses do a very good job of screening the people who apply to work in our lab. The first two were a HUGE help because I had so many projects going on that I couldn't do it all alone.
Our current student is great but I feel bad. She got hired because we were supposedly supposed to start a couple of collaborating projects that would require massive amounts of my time. Well we haven't heard a peep from the collaborators and so I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs. There really isn't any busy work to do in a lab if projects aren't in motion.
At Creighton I was 1:3. The best was a medical student but he was going for the PhD/MD program he had a vested interest in doing a good job. The undergraduates were HORRIBLE, one stopped showing up completely after I kicked him out for wearing shorts and sandals. The other one screwed up so bad it took me six months to clean up the mess.
We didn't pick them, they got assigned to us by the college. I don't think they would have been accepted if we could have screened them.
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greeniis10
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Jul 16, 2013 12:05:56 GMT -5
Post by greeniis10 on Jul 16, 2013 12:05:56 GMT -5
For those of you that have to deal with interns regularly I sympathize, especially when it interferes with your own work load. However, I'm also grateful because from what I've seen lately, high school and college in no way prepares our kids for the reality of the work force. This is why part-time jobs starting as early as possible are important. So many things cannot be taught by either the schools or the parents until you just get out there and figure it out.
Work ethic is basically non-existent. Expecting them to be without their phones is an outrage to them. Be on time EVERY day, do whatever you need to do, put in your time and make the best of it. Be prepared to not like it. That's ok. Starting at the bottom making less money than expected is a foreign concept. Even if we as parents don't do it, the schools (around here) seem to coddle the kids.
Anyway, although it is an annoyance I wish there were a lot more intern options for all kids in high school and college.
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The Captain
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Jul 16, 2013 12:22:50 GMT -5
Post by The Captain on Jul 16, 2013 12:22:50 GMT -5
I guess I've been very lucky with interns. Usually have only hired ones that have finished their sophmore or junior year so they have some accounting classes under their belt.
With one exception (and I've had over a dozen interns over the years) they have had a great work ethic, were willing to do the scut work in addition to the meaty jobs, and in general were quick learners.
In public accounting, internships were usually to screen for potential new hires. In industry it's more of a cheap (or not so much so, we pay our interns $15/hr) labor thing where we give good experience in return for relatively low wages.
As far as training them, yes it takes some time but I try to carve out tasks that take a lot of time and have low risk and build in cross checks. In the end interns end up saving me more time then I spend training them.
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973beachbum
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Jul 16, 2013 12:42:42 GMT -5
Post by 973beachbum on Jul 16, 2013 12:42:42 GMT -5
We have had unpaid interns and often hire cheap help. The interns are college students who want to get some time in a company and see what an engineer ect does. the engineers, when they are willing, will take them under their wing and show them what they are doing ect. It isn't a job though because they aren't actualy doing any real work just watching someone work and asking questions. We have hired students in the summer as cheap scut help. Most are fine by the time the summer is over and seem like more trouble then they are worth at the beginning. Isn't that the way with most new employees?
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Deleted
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Interns
Jul 16, 2013 13:27:52 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2013 13:27:52 GMT -5
I really don't understandards the issue
give me anyone and I can find a good use for them, kind of like Tina w/ worst case having them shadow me, take notes, etc. It all helps me out, and if they succeed at these menial tasks than I'll invest time to train them up and harvest that investment with an eventual less workload for me.
If they keep f'n up than they never graduate above menial tasks, but at least all my shredding & stuff is done & that takes some load off me & requires minimal effort from me on how to train them.
towards the end of one summer, I had an intern that pretty much totally did my day to day job for me (allowing me time for all the other side projects my boss gave me)
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Otto the Orange
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Jul 17, 2013 5:24:40 GMT -5
Post by Otto the Orange on Jul 17, 2013 5:24:40 GMT -5
I had an intern once and it was great for once I got to squoosh someone else instead of someone squooshing me
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