I
recently had a couple interns work for me at SalesWise.
They were great resources to help in marketing, sales, prospecting, support,
etc.
However,
the interns were straight out of high school (or still in). They did not have
much experience in any particular area. It was a challenge, at first, to get
them ramped up on what to do. Luckily, I leaned on my experience as a co-op
back at Georgia Tech to help me lead my interns.
My
biggest advice to the interns, and indeed, the same understanding I wanted them
to be grounded on: “Absorb as much as you can, even if the work seems ‘simple’.”
My
biggest advice to them after their time? “Re-read and re-absorb everything you
did.”
One of
my regrets from my internship at UPS Supply
Chain Solutions back in the day was not absorbing as much as I could about
logistics, transportation, the contacts I interacted with, their interests,
etc. As I look back, there were hundreds of connections I wish I kept in touch
with. (LinkedIn makes it much easier to do this today.)
I had my
interns research our various customer profiles — their functions (i.e. sales
operations, sales enablement, marketing ops, other), the challenges of each
persona, how our solution could benefit these individuals, etc. By the end of
their time, they could rattle off what was important to each person and could
write messages or communicate with each person in a meaningful way.
I feel
my co-op experience gave me great insight into being a professional and working
with others, especially communication. However, I missed out on some of the
“tribal knowledge” because I didn’t think much about it.
For my
interns, I felt it was important (as each wanted to enter some role in
business) to understand the people on the other side of the table — customers,
internal stakeholders, etc. I wanted them to understand the WHY of each task. These interns were very bright, hardworking, and
self-starters.
They
will run up against many other students who are just as bright, hardworking,
and self-starting. What will set them apart is their ability to immediately
contribute and have accelerated growth. It’s this tribal knowledge, these
concepts around understanding audiences, etc. that will make these interns
highly valuable as they seek their next opportunities.
What
are the pieces of advice you give to interns? How have you helped nurture
interns? If you were an intern, what was some of the best advice or best
take-aways from your experience?
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