Here goes one more posting on internship more in terms of
how employers should handle their interns at Workplace.
In this posting, I would like to share my own experience that I had as
an HR student. That was more than a decade ago. I did my internship in three
different organizations when I was an HR student. It was a mix of good, bad and ugly and let us
check my story.
My internship experience.
It was a Monday which meant getting up early to onboard my company bus for
my internship. The factory was in the outskirts and I had to be there in the pick-up
point by 7.30 am in the morning to catch the company bus. If you don’t show up on time, the bus will
move on. That was the simple principle with
which they operated the bus services so one’s delay or cumulative delay of few
does not affect all the others reaching the factory on time.
My alarm rings at 6.30 AM. I switch it off to take a nap for a while and
I hurry up. We used to get my breakfast in the factory canteen which was a big
time-saver. So I get ready and reach the pick-up point just on time to be
picked up by the Bus.
Those were the days that I always used to look forward to my internship
in this particular factory. Unlike my
previous internships, I had few meaningful work to do that provided practical
insight to what I studied in my class room. I still remember that, on my first
day, the HR Manager had a brief chat with me to understand why I chose HR, what
is my long term career ambition, what I intend to do during my internship. He
also gave an idea of what kind of work he was planning to involve me during
these 6 months of concurrent internship. That was a good start.
It was not just the talk; he really did walk the talk. First I got to attend some of their in-house
training programs and I was made in charge for all internal communications and collecting
feedbacks for all the programs. Being SPOC for something when you are an Intern
is really cool and it really made a big difference to me.
After a brief orientation on compiling and preparing a report on
Training feedback, I started doing it for all the training programs myself
independently. The feedbacks are given on a 5 point rating scale and the job
involved capturing the rating given for each of the questions by all
participants. When I made few mistakes in capturing the feedback response and I
was to meet him in his cabin. I was little nervous and mentally preparing as to
how to deal with that situation. All those preparation became useless when he said
that if you don’t make a mistake, you’ve not learnt anything new.
He explained about the consequences of my mistake in terms of how a good
program can be rated as a bad and vice versa.
He continued to have the same trust on me and he continued to assign me meaningful
tasks that provided good learning opportunity for me.
After few days of internship, I had a proper workstation to sit and do
my work. By the time I was about to complete my internship, I got exposed to
the basic functions like time office, disciplinary action, canteen management
which are still important activities in a factory set-up. This internship
indeed played a big role in getting my first corporate break.
My bad and ugly experiences in other industries were really bad and
ugly. No proper place to sit and no one to guide. Nobody to bother if I was present or absent.
No work even after follow-up and I had to kill my time. No learning period.
I’ve summed up few important points from my internship experience in
terms of how employers should manage their interns.
“
Do give
them meaningful work. That’s what will
motivate the Interns. Unless you have
meaningful work / tasks that you can give it to interns, don’t hire them.
Internship
must add to their employability skills.
Give them
minimum required resources. Identify someone who can be a SPOC or mentor for
the Interns.
Remember,
Interns too can be your brand ambassadors.
”
If yES,
yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO
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