Intern Your Way to The Top

Andrea Thomas

Three JFP summer 2011 interns are now on staff. The others are in school and doing great stuff, and we miss them.

by Donna Ladd
December 21, 2011

Ask a professional with a great job if he or she ever interned. Chances are the answer will be yes. Internships (and externships, which often refer to shorter intern periods) are an invaluable way to bridge the experience gap between school and a job. When done right by the employer and the intern, they are a way for interns to learn professional, social and time-management skills that their college or high-school teachers might not have instilled (sadly).

Internships also offer shed a light on what life is really like in a profession, or in a particular industry segment.

A successful internship may well get someone to choose a different career: better to learn you're not right for a certain path before you're too far down it.

Some folks shy away from internships because they think they are just free labor where they will just do mindless tasks. You can still learn about an industry in such an internship, but they're certainly not ideal. The best internships require high standards (similar to those for regular employees) and give interns both substantive work and training, including classes and workshops, not to mention honest feedback and advice.

Good internships can be paid, and sometimes they're not. But it is not a "good" free internship if an employer doesn't provide educational tasks and learning opportunities (and isn't legal, to boot.) Also, an employer can never promise an intern a job after completing a free internship, although it's perfectly cool for them to apply for one. (Our art director here, for instance, replied through Twitter to a call for internships, and proved herself so valuable that we hired and quickly promoted her. It doesn't, and can't, happen every time, though.)

The key to good internships is for the intern and the employer to give serious thought to what the intern is going to get out of the learning experiences. Here are strategies:


For the Employer
• An intern is not there to get coffee and file all day. It's fine to have them do some tedious tasks to get the feel for how such an office works, but it should be mixed in with significant work that challenges their comfort zones and offers real on-the-job training.

• When possible, allow interns to set their own schedules—many have school and other jobs—but then hold them to their hours. This is key. If you treat the intern as a second thought, you are not teaching professionalism and time management.

• Likewise, interns must dress like other professionals in the office. If they want to wear shorts and flip-flops, they should stay home or go hang at the reservoir.

• Know that many interns do not have basic professional skills such as time management and knowledge of how work-flow systems work. Teach them everything you possibly can.

• Hold classes and workshops and give homework and require readings. You might be surprised to find that interns, especially Generation Y, tend to love these gab-fest gatherings.

• Give inspirational talks. Interns love to be inspired to change the world. Tell them often how you're doing it.

• Whenever possible, include interns in staff and professional meetings and workshops and treat them like everyone else. We like to "workshop" and use Socratic-type questioning in our gatherings to promote innovation and feedback; we include our interns just like everyone else.

• Tell them why you do things the way you do.

• Invite interns to give you feedback and tell them the appropriate ways and times to do so.

• Get interns to work in teams to learn project-management strategies. Let them plan without you and then get approval.

• Teach interns appropriate boundaries, such as when it's OK to bound into the boss' office or get chatty.

• "Fire" interns if they repeatedly skip come in late, not at all or do other inappropriate things. Sometimes, it's just the splash of cold water they need to get their attention and help them.


For the Intern
• Even if you're interning for free, you are using employers' resources. Show up on time and honor your commitments.

• Observe the vibe in the office. If people don't get into long personal conversations at work (and in good offices, they don't), then don't do it yourself.

• Dress professionally—and more like the person you'd like to be in the office than the one you wouldn't. Seriously, no shorts and flipflops.

• Meet your deadlines even if you have to put in extra time. This will get you great references, and maybe even a job.

• Listen intently, and ask staffers questions. It shows you're interested in something other than yourself. This is good.

• Don't wait to be told to work. When you don't have something to do, ask for something. Always try to have a company project in the "background." Work on that project if you don't have other work. Read trade journals and industry blogs. This is called being a "self-starter," and people notice.

• Do not waste time on social media and texting friends. Seriously. Tell your friends you're "at work" and unavailable.

• Take yourself seriously so others will. Set personal goals and learn to manage your time and plan for deadlines.

• Don't be allergic to the telephone. It's a vital business tool.

• Be the kind of intern who enjoys being around a variety of people of all ages. The most successful employees are not weird about age, theirs or anyone else's. Diversity means age, too.

• To make a great impression, offer to solve problems.

• If the internship isn't teaching you anything or is all demeaning work, look for another one. Leave well, though.

• Meet and greet everyone you meet on the job. "Hi, I'm _______" followed by a firm handshake. Smile a lot.

• After you leave, write personal thank-you notes to staffers who mentored you. That one note may get you a job at some point. Stay in touch and send the employer other interns.


Donna's Advice to Departing Interns
When interns leave the JFP, I send them back into the world with this list of random career tips.

1. Journalists must always watchdog the truth and take care of the powerless. Be willing to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, or do something else.

2. Journalists know that our role is not, first and foremost, entertainment. It is to engage people in life and tell them stuff they don't have time to figure out themselves.

3. Every journalist should want to change the world—or at least his or her little postage stamp. Leave it better than you found it.

4. Each one teach one. Over and over again. Mentor, be mentored, rinse, repeat.

5. Work in teams. Don't be so competitive that you won't share resources and stories.

6. No passives. Live and write in the active voice.

7. Writing is rewriting. And rewriting. And rewriting.

8. Stand up for good journalism, even to bad editors and corporate publishers.

9. Be curious.

10. Don't be pretentious (not that any of you could be).

11. Seek and be deliberate about diversity: religious, ethnic, economic, age, etc.

12. Dare to be different.

13. Find the story, then take time to tell it well.

14. Have a personal code of ethics, and be accountable to it and yourself.

15. Help others, and you will be helped.

16. Don't try to make everyone happy, or want everyone to like you. Journalists often aren't popular—and that makes us more popular. Go figure.

17. Check your facts. Then one more time.

18. Never make the same mistake twice if you can help it. Learn from them. It make be a cliche, but it's true.

19. Do the thing you cannot do. And then another one. And another one.

20. Don't be a stranger. We will miss you!

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