ROI: Return on Internship

Over the last few years, organizations have increasingly relied on college summer internships to help fill the new hire pipeline: 80 percent of companies surveyed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) said that recruiting for full time hires was the primary purpose of companies’ internship programs.

Summer internships aren’t new, but it’s only recently that they’ve taken on the full magnitude of what amounts to a summer-long job interview.

Clearly, this works for companies, as it provides a cost-effective opportunity to kick the tires before purchasing, but it also provides a tremendous opportunity for the interns themselves to demonstrate value and convert their summer positions into full time job offers.

But the anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that summer interns are not maximizing the opportunity.

For example, in a recent survey (Emily Bennington, Seriously Empowered Leadership) of more than 700 executives, approximately 75 percent believe that the recent crop of college interns and grads aren’t “cutting it.” In fact, of the 68 percent of respondents who work with or hire new grads, only 26 percent felt those grads were prepared for the rigors and requirements of the 21st Century workplace.

While these aspiring professionals may emerge from college with some subject matter intelligence, they’re not arriving with a mastery, let alone understanding, of the critical skills needed to secure the job, demonstrate value…and then succeed. In some cases, companies — to see return on their summer investment — offer training to help interns enhance their performance and start taking ownership of their careers.

With that said, make no mistake: this is not a one-way transaction.

Instead, interns must also assume responsibility, take initiative and routinely go beyond the assigned task, anticipate what’s next, maintain a solution-focus and over-deliver.

In a time when budgets are tight, layers of management are gone, ROI is king and basically there’s zero tolerance for organizational “fat,” it’s incumbent on interns to demonstrate value every day.

But that requires a host of skills that aren’t taught in school and that often, managers have neither the time nor the inclination to teach.

The executive survey revealed three specific categories in which interns and new hires were lacking:

Effective communication:

How ironic that we’ve got so many modes of communication yet the quality of the exchange is getting worse. But effective communication is at the heart of everything else so it’s imperative that interns master this as a tent pole skill. In an increasingly complex global environment, communication requires sensitivity, finesse and clarity. This applies both to verbal and non-verbal communication which greatly impact how we’re perceived: the truth is that we only have one chance to make a first impression.

21st Century Skills:

Being knowledgeable no longer confers the competitive edge, as we’ve moved past the Information Age and are situated squarely in the Conceptual Age. Information, in fact, has been commoditized, with access as close as one’s Smartphone. Instead, a distinguishing characteristic of this century is the ability to think critically: information is useless without knowing how to deploy it, how to connect the dots, how to infer, how to contextualize and innovate.

Professional Presence:

Being college students, summer interns at best have only been exposed to the bare minimum of what it takes to create a memorable professional presence. But it’s this presence that will get them noticed and get them ahead.

There are a number of components that go into a compelling professional presence, but the most important is creating a strong personal brand; in fact, the concept of a personal brand, so essential to career success, is the mother of all power tools in the professional toolbox. Clearly, summer interns are young and their brands — developing over time — will come from experience, but this is an ideal opportunity for them to start the process.

As they do, they need to remember that a personal brand stands in our stead so, in addition to communicating competencies, it must be authentic.

All this said, the most important thing for summer interns to understand is that an internship is not the end game but rather a portal to full time employment. In short, how interns “show up” is their decision and within their control.