Many companies have internship programs. These programs serve as a way to recruit college students, assess their fit for the organization, increase company reputation, and provide one-off funding for specific projects.

Internship Program Goals

Internship programs typically have the following goals:

  • Deliver a reasonable hire / no-hire decision for the specific intern.
  • Increase company reputation as a great place to work.
    • Intern has a great experience, wants to come back, and tells others about their experience.
    • Intern believes they were treated fairly.
    • Intern feels well supported.
    • Intern does fun relevant work.
  • Make progress on a specific project with the addition of another temporary person.

Arc

An internship is usually around 12 weeks long.

The intern should receive feedback throughout on how well they are doing, and where they can improve.

The first week should establish expectations and evaluation criteria. The first week should be spent getting everything set up and completing a simple warm up exercise that demonstrates everything is working.

The middle week should have an formal evaluation of progress based on evaluation criteria.

The final week should have a final evaluation of that criteria.