Internships Part II: The Implicit Contract
For part one, go here.
There is an implicit contract that the intern and employer enter into when an internship begins. I think that because it is implicit, it is rarely heeded. I’d like to take a moment to make it explicit for both parties. This post has the same disclaimer as Part One which is that I am talking about internships with individuals or small teams, not larger agencies that have whole processes in place for chewing through interns.
Interns
Interns. It is your job to lighten the load or increase the capacity of your employer. You do this in exchange for valuable experience knowledge and industry connections. In most cases you should be paid, but not a lot. You are making a sacrifice early in your career for much greater gains as you develop. While you should expect to work on some interesting projects, not all of your work will be knowledge work. Gopher work should be a part of it too and you shouldn’t shy away from it.
Because many employers are too polite to request help with menial tasks, you can distinguish yourself by spotting and doing them proactively. Offer to go on coffee runs. Clean up the office space without asking. If you see your employer, for example, taking out the trash every Wednesday, offer to save them the time & effort. If you find yourself without anything to do, feel free to suggest a project or a couple projects to your employer. It will be easier for them to pick something from a list than to generate something on the fly.
During your time as an intern, your goal should be to ship as many quality projects that you can show off in your portfolio as possible. Before you start your internship you should set this expectation and hold your employer to it. You should measure the success of your internship by how much work you ship and how much fun you had. The next step is either a full-time position at the place of your internship or some other interesting company.
Employers
Employers. When you take on an intern, you are agreeing to mentor them and help develop their skills. You should be consistently imparting industry knowledge and meaningful feedback to them. If you are doing that right, the intern will leave the internship more talented and more employable than when they started.
It’s ok and give interns some amount of gopher work as long as you are balancing that with meaningful project work that gets completed and published. Don’t take on an intern if you don’t have specific projects lined up for them. It’s not fair to either of you. An intern does not simply want to bask in your glow. An intern wants to ship. They may bask for a little while, but soon they will realize that you, like everyone else, are just a person.
Set your internship for a finite period of time. This is a jumping off point for the intern and you need to ensure they do not get stuck. As the internship is coming to a close, you should be attempting to help your intern find a job. You should consider your internship a success if you either decide to hire your intern on a full-time basis or you are able to help them find a full-time gig somewhere else that is cool. If your intern struggles to find a job following your internship, odds are you didn’t do right by them.
This contract is sealed
If each side lives up to their end of the bargain, you have a smarter, more employable intern, a lightened load for the employer and a long-term industry friendship. This contract is sealed.
