GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR INTERN

Interns are generally eager, enthusiastic and keen to work. It is up to you how you choose to harness this tremendous positive energy!

A good place to start is by putting yourself in their shoes. Many interns will be arriving in a new country, with little experience of the working world and an amount of trepidation. The best thing you can do is offer them as much support as possible during their internship and before they arrive. This can include:

Helping to find accommodation

One of the biggest worries faced by overseas interns coming to the UK is finding somewhere to live. If you can take a little time to think of useful resources (or people with a spare room) this will make a big difference to the intern's initial impression of your company and, indeed, the UK.

Ensuring that their funding is in place

This will help you in the long run! You will receive forms to fill in and return to the intern's university; if you don't do this on time your intern may well never turn up.

Remuneration

While many students around the world receive better funding than their British counterparts, it is still a stretch to ask them for an extended period of unpaid work. You should offer an appropriate stipend, or, if this is unrealistic, offer help with transport, accommodation, expenses etc. This should be clearly defined before the intern arrives.

Offering Useful Information

Give your intern some information about what to expect. This can include things like whether they need a UK bank account to receive payment (it can be easier to pay foreign interns in cash, as they may not be in the UK long enough to warrant a bank account) and where they can get onto the internet in their free time.

If you are not arranging their transport for them, you should give enough travel information (links to busses, trains, flight services) as possible to make their journey less stressful. What would you want to know before arriving in your town?

Once your intern arrives

You should do your best to make the intern feel like part of the team. This can involve having regular chats to make sure that everything is going ok and answering any questions they may have. If your intern feels appreciated, they will work harder and care more, so it is good practice to assign a supervisor to them who can assess how everything is going and help with problems.

Coming to a new place can be lonely, so make sure that you do your best to accommodate the intern in any company social activities you may have going on.

Show them respect! Work experience traditionally evokes images of round after round of tea making and a tremendous amount of photocopying. This doesn't really cut the mustard nowadays and you are likely to have an empty desk pretty promptly if you treat your intern like this… not that you would, of course. Your intern will most likely become a useful member of the team and offer fresh angles on the way you work.