Here's something I've been thinking about a lot lately - if you have an intern who is not really with it, how do you go about helping him/her get a clue? We have an intern this summer who's really clueless. S/he came to us through a city program, and s/he is...well...I don't even know quite where to begin. Here are are a couple of examples:
-I gave him/her an invoice to copy. It was probably 20 or 30 pages thick. When s/he returned it, the original invoice was missing, and the copy was stapled together, but not in a stack - the papers were all messed up and haphazardly stapled together.
-S/he asked me if I knew were blue legal sized file folders were so s/he could finish a task. I said I wasn't sure, but to ask M. An hour later, s/he asked me again if I knew where the folders were. I again said that I did not, but that M. did, so s/he should ask her. 45 minutes later I asked intern if s/he'd asked M where the folders were, and s/he had not so I asked M. WTF?
-S/he has a habit of walking around the corner (s/he sits on the other side of a wall from my area) to pick up something from the printer and, while rounding the corner, stretching out, yawning, and saying something like, "Man, I'm so tired."
How do you deal with this sort of thing? I'm partially attributing this to the fact that we never really laid out clear expectations for the interns, but part of it is...come on! Anyone have any suggestions?
About Me
- Viki
- I'm a singer by night, HR person by day, have some super cool kitties, and love coffee, chocolate (99% cocoa rocks!), wine, and cheese. My current favorite musical works are Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2, and Handel's Let the Bright Seraphim.
My avatar
7 comments:
What? Someone to compare to FFG? hahaha.
Yea. I don't know. But we've all been there before. Ok, I'm sure I have, I'll admit it. Part of it may have to do with them not having enough to do ("man, I'm so tired" comment), and stuff like the stapled invoice? Just tell them what you want when it's returned wrong.
We have these problems with interns all the time. At my workplace, we generally have about 5 or so interns at any one time, often more. Generally there's 1 that is outstanding, 1 or 2 that do okay, and a couple that are just plain clueless.
We DO lay out clear explanations for them, and they get regular supervision, but I think some of them just don't know how to act in the workplace. Perhaps they haven't worked much before, perhaps they are lazy, perhaps they are nervous, perhaps they have never had to be accountable for anything before...I think the reasons are endless.
I agree, your intern definitely falls into the "clueless category." The good news is that sometimes they get better. The worse news is that most of the time, they do not.
Good luck, hope s/he isn't too exasperating.
I am straight forward with our intern. She started out VERY...green...yah that's a good descriptor. After that first week I just took things back to her and was forward about how "we" do things. In reality the "we" is corporate America. I also have a personal policy that says if you screwed it up, you need to fix it. So take the stack back to her with one that shows an 'appropriate' way staple it and ask for her to return both copies and the original when she is done.
It won't work, but it is the only way to get a point across
For my intern I created a specific job description to outline her duties. We sat down and agreed (or agreed to disagree) and set her off and running. I agree with j&h that if it's wrong and they did it, they fix it. Good luck.
ooh, and it's not just interns. We have a dude in our company who has his Ph. D. plus YEARS of relevant experience (then again, this is the guy who hasn't named his 6 month old daughter anything other than "little squirrel"). Anyway. He's supposed to be working on a SPECIFIC ingredient for the company, to save the company TONS of $$. And, after 3 months on the job, he asked if he could source the same ingredient that he's supposed to have developed- from a flavor supplier (they don't supply raw materials like that - get this: flavor suppliers supply FLAVOR), for a product that may eventually be able to seriously reduce THE top flavor for that company.
riiiight. They'll go for that!
I have never had an intern, I have heard horror stories. I was an intern once and I hope seriously hope, no one ever had issues like this with me!! They did have trouble keeping me busy, but I guess that is a better problem than me not being able to copy something. :) I think this person should find FFG and they should be friends. They would totally understand each other, especially since the rest of us don't. :) hehe
You guys need to find a good intern someday, but then who would we talk about :)
Thanks for the comments and thoughts - we do actually have a few interns this summer, and the others are fantastic! We love them. It's just this one... Oh, well.
Post a Comment