In 2010 I have one con­crete albeit ambi­tious goal, to cre­ate the great­est col­lege intern­ship pro­gram on earth. The non­profit cham­ber and eco­nomic devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion I work for approved it and it’s offi­cially in my work plan as my num­ber one objec­tive for the com­ing year. The prospect of help­ing emerg­ing tal­ent meet oppor­tu­nity is very moti­vat­ing and exciting.

There are many flaws in the way cur­rent intern­ship pro­grams work.

There are sev­eral national intern­ship web­sites that act as infor­ma­tion por­tals and “job boards”. Many employ­ers are not famil­iar with these web­sites and when career ser­vices offices tell them they need to cre­ate employer accounts and jump through hoops they quickly get frus­trated and don’t fol­low through.  Because these web­sites are national, com­pa­nies don’t nec­es­sar­ily attract local stu­dents. At the same time, most stu­dents man­age classes and intern­ships dur­ing the same semes­ter so they need to stay local. It’s impor­tant to man­age intern­ship pro­grams locally to allow for super­vi­sion of and assis­tance with the intern and employer expe­ri­ence. Intro­duc­ing stu­dents to oppor­tu­ni­ties with local employ­ers also helps aid in the reten­tion of regional tal­ent and pre­ven­tion of “brain drain”.

Stu­dents and employ­ers scram­ble to find each other. Employ­ers will­ing to pro­vide an oppor­tu­nity to a stu­dent shouldn’t have to work hard to find one or have to reach out to mul­ti­ple col­lege career ser­vices offices to adver­tise. Student’s should under­stand employer expec­ta­tions and how to con­duct an intern­ship or job search.

Another chal­lenge is the con­cept many employ­ers have of what an intern­ship is. While there are com­pa­nies that look to recruit entry level col­lege grads and rec­og­nize that “try before you buy” is an excel­lent way to do it while assist­ing in the student’s edu­ca­tion, many times what com­pa­nies are look­ing for is cheap labor. Errand boys, enve­lope stuffers and fil­ing clerks do not require col­lege edu­ca­tions and intern­ships shouldn’t be framed around these functions.

The goal is to enlist com­pa­nies with a mis­sion of com­mu­nity part­ner­ship and good cor­po­rate cit­i­zen­ship as exten­sions of higher edu­ca­tion. That means that through this pro­gram they’ll pledge to do their part and take on a cer­tain num­ber of interns per year under spe­cially crafted intern work plans based on job descrip­tions and goals that will be approved and pro­vide mean­ing­ful expe­ri­en­tial learn­ing for students.

Stu­dents won’t just walk into an intern­ship either. They’ll apply, inter­view and go through a selec­tion process just like if it were a reg­u­lar posi­tion they were going after.To help them pre­pare, they’ll attend pro­gram admin­is­tered career prepa­ra­tion work­shops to assist them with resumes and inter­view skills. They’ll learn the dif­fer­ence between non-exempt and exempt employ­ees, go through mock ori­en­ta­tion and non-harassment train­ing and review and dis­cuss exam­ple employee poli­cies and handbooks.

Employ­ers will pro­vide an ori­en­ta­tion, an intern men­tor and reg­u­lar coach­ing and feed­back that is doc­u­mented. Mid and end of semes­ter for­mal per­for­mance eval­u­a­tions will be con­ducted and delivered.

Stu­dents need to have tools and expe­ri­ence to set them up for career suc­cess. The pro­gram will pro­vide a one semes­ter real world career expe­ri­ence and the tools to be suc­cess­ful. Employ­ers will have a more pro­duc­tive and func­tion­ing junior careerist on board, the oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence a poten­tial addi­tion to their team and a huge hand in the devel­op­ment of com­mu­nity tal­ent in exchange for their com­mit­ment to act as “career labs”.

The logis­tics of the pro­gram require cen­tral­iza­tion to a regional com­mon career ser­vices cen­ter shared by all area insti­tu­tions of higher edu­ca­tion and employ­ers. This means stu­dents from all par­tic­i­pat­ing col­leges will seek their intern­ships from one source. They won’t have to be con­cerned that not all com­pa­nies will­ing to pro­vide intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties haven’t reached out to recruit at their par­tic­u­lar school. Con­versely, employ­ers will no longer have to reach out to many career ser­vices offices to announce intern­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties. They’ll also have one con­tact, one source, to man­age their tal­ent search. Col­lege career ser­vices offices will serve as on cam­pus liaisons for the pro­gram and have more time to focus on work­ing with stu­dents to iden­tify their career goals and pro­vide resume prepa­ra­tion and inter­view skills assistance.

As a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion at the helm, we’ll be happy to share our model with other like minded orga­ni­za­tions every­where who want to improve the ways tal­ent meets oppor­tu­nity. I’m ask­ing you to reflect and com­ment here on the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive aspects of your col­lege intern­ship and also about intern­ships at the com­pany you work for.  If you have great ideas about what would work bet­ter or what not to do I want to hear them. Your com­ments will help to cre­ate the great­est intern­ship pro­gram on earth!