Using Interns to build your business
By Gavin | May 14, 2008
Can you get people to come and work in your business for free?According to James Brausch it depends on selling your Vision.
James has a product called the Freedom Business System I haven’t purchased it, but I am definitely impressed by his approach.
He utilises interns and Virtual Assistant’s interchangeably.
To do this successfully requires good training and laying out procedures and systems for them to follow without the Intern having to spend too much time interacting with you.
We’ve done a couple of projects for him and I’ve seen how he lays out his tasks, it’s impressive, I think he uses the same camtasia videos for his interns as he does for the VA’s
A couple of clients (so they are good guys not bullshitters) I know quite well follow his methods and they speak highly of him.
If you don’t know who James Brausch is he is a very direct in your face type of person, some may say even obnoxious. However his results stack up so he has that going for him.
My questions are these:
Do you have training material that you can use to teach people to do the tasks in your business?
Have you got skills that other people want to learn from? e.g. you might be a successful Life Coach, Personal Trainer or Internet Marketer, if so it’s possible that there are people who would like to learn from you in return for a couple of hours a day.
What are your experiences working with interns or even being one?
Topics: outsourcing, services |
One Response to “Using Interns to build your business”
Comments
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June 10th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I have used interns in past businesses and as you mentioned the are some keys:
1) A good formalized hiring process. Follow your ‘regular’ hiring process. If it does not work, it is a great opportunity to improve it. It should not be a divining rod feeling. True the resume and job history will not be as extensive as a regular employee, but a good hiring process will still separate the wheat from the chaff. If you don’t have one, ‘buy’ or create one and use the interns as ‘test subjects’.
2) Clear expectations - on your part. This is worthy of a lot more, but for now lets just say - if you don’t know what you want, it is not fair to expect someone else, especially an intern to know what you want. Of course what you want seldom is what is the perfectly right thing to do at this instant anyways.
3) Define a clear review process. Both you and the intern need to be clear on what will be measured and how success will be defined. Hint: a single review at the end of an internship does not allow much room for growth and success.
4) Get help (maybe from an VA?) to document what you want to be accomplished or build that into the role of the intern. But be aware - an person hired for their sales presentation or coding skills my not have the skills in how to document their roles. Especially if they are an intern without ‘corporate’ background.
5) Treat interns (and everyone) as real valued members of the team. Invite them to social events, relevant meetings, lunches. Adapt to their strengths and weaknesses. Treat them as individuals that are looking for a job. They probably do not have the entrepreneur spirit that you have, and their needs for job security may be higher then yours. Plus by the nature of it being an internship - there is less ’security’.
6) Invite feedback and input from the intern. If you have ‘room’ in your organization, let the intern define their own job(s) or responsibility. Passion on an interns part will trump your individual preference most of the time. Or at least help you understand the interns longer term role.
7) Start thinking about the interns longer term role for them (and you). Could the grow to be an employee on your team, how about a consultant, trainer for the next intern, can you ’set them up’ with another company after working with you (another win for you in networking, and potential to better understand another company after a reunion lunch-not like a spy, but as an exchange).
8) As it has been said before, help enough other people become successful, and you will be successful beyond your wildest dreams.
9) Remember, not all of your ‘regular’ employees work out (many companies have a turnover rate of 20-50% per year), so expecting an intern to be perfect is not fair to you or the intern. If it does not work out, learn something and TRY AGAIN. Odds are (very good odds) you both made mistakes - share and learn from each other.
10)College recruiting centers tend to produce better (on average) then Craigslist.org but I have had success with both.
11) Build a process and improve the process. Putting it in writing takes time, but usually improves communication and effectiveness through clearer thinking, especially for smaller operations.
OK, these are just a few ideas I have picked up in effective use of hiring and managing interns, based on managing the HR department and my experiences as an intern over high school and college at large and small companies like AT&T and BP-Amoco.