Dan J. Berger

Your startup is kicking ass, your name is getting out there, and you’ve gotten some interns for the summer. Now what?

Before you start giving them any work (from a simple admin task to a complex long-term project) read this list to learn how to maximize this opportunity for both your startup and your interns. Time is of the essence for three reasons: (1) they’re excited to work with you and you want to capitalize on this energy; (2) the summer will be over before you know it; and (3) you want to onboard them quickly so you can go back to your work.

1. Introduce them. This is especially important if you’re running a distributed team that’s not located in the same place. 

At Social Tables, we have three interns: an intern in Indiana, NYC and DC (where Matt and I are).  I first emailed all of our interns to introduce them to one another. A few days later, we organized a conference call in order to further build camaraderie. The next day, the three interns were emailing each other back and forth with ideas!

2. Share information with them. I tend to trust people unless they’ve given me a reason not to and the same goes for our interns.

For example, at Social Tables, one of the first things we do when we bring on a new intern is share with them our company calendar (make sure you still get them to sign an NDA).  You can also do this by sending them company documents (e.g. a safe copy of your pitch deck) and forwarding them relevant articles (StartupDigest is a good place to start).

3. Make them feel welcome. Being an intern is scary. You’re entering a new company and you have a short amount of time to make a lasting impression. Help ease some of your interns’ tensions by making them feel welcome.

At Social Tables, one of the first things we did was create an email account for each of our interns.  Other ways to do this include: CC’ing them on emails they might be interested in and writing a post on your startup’s blog introducing them.

4. Assign them meaningful work. Time and time again I have seen supervisors giving interns busy work to either get them off the supervisor’s back or to give them a sense of accomplishment.  For an intern, such assignments can be overwhelming and oftentimes frustrating.  To combat this, have a conversation with your interns very early on to learn what it is that they’re trying to get out of the experience.  Give them ownership of a portion of your business and tangible tasks under that area of expertise.  These tasks should include a combination of operational and strategic work.

For example, one of our interns is an event planner in training who loves social media and so we’ve tasked her with community engagement. She is drafting our engagement strategy (strategic) and at the same time engaging influential individuals in the event planning world (operational).

5. Coach them early on. Interns joined your startup to learn.  Therefore it is critical to coach (not micromanage) them.  To do this, first solicit their input on how they would get a task done.  Next, tell them how you would get it done.  Give them a concrete framework and provide relevant examples.

For example, one of our interns is interested in design and so we’ve tasked her with reviewing the Social Tables UI.  I told her to first map out the site and then create some recommendations on how to improve our Ux.  Her first work product included pretty dramatic recommendations for improvement.  Unfortunately, not all of them were feasible and so I instructed her to ground her recommendations in design principles, back her findings with our usage data, and solicit feedback from other designers.

The United States, recently dubbed “Intern Nation” by Ross Perlin (an excellent review of that book can be found here), is known for its unapologetic use of interns. While it can be easy to sit back, relax, and let interns do the nitty gritty of your startup’s tasks, doing so will not only do a disservice to your interns that are looking to build their experience,  it will also do a disservice to your startup that can stand to gain from the enthusiasm, entrepreneurial spirit, and drive.

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Dan Berger, Co-Founder of Social Tables, designed and ran an internship program for a Senior Member of Congress with 65 interns for four years. He was also the lead researcher for a book on onboarding.