The top 5 reasons you should hire an intern
In today’s episode, I’m going to give you the top five reasons you should hire an intern. At least the top five reasons that I hire interns. And the reason why I thought this episode was really relevant today in particular is because I’m smack in the middle of interviewing a multitude of interns for different positions within the different businesses that I’m currently involved with. So yes I practice what I preach, and this episode is a testament to that.
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Here’s the transcript from this podcast episode, please excuse any typos!
The first reason is completely obvious, but it can really get past people like you might realize that it’s happening but you won’t do anything about it. We’ll just keep plugging along. And that’s if you’re overwhelmed with a lot of trivial tasks, whether it’s emailing, posting on social media, creating graphics, editing documents, creating documents, reaching out to people like these things that take up a lot of time, but they’re not super important, like anybody could realistically do them. That’s something that an intern can come in and you can give them access to certain things that will show them how you work, how you operate, and let them take over you focus on the more important things and they can start working on these trivial tasks. And if they’re really good at it, which again, you shouldn’t be hiring multiple interns to see who’s good at what you may find. yourself not having to do these trivial tasks anymore, they might just take over. And the best part is if it only takes them, let’s say one hour or two hours per day to do these tasks. And if you’re paying them an hourly rate, well then they’re only making a certain amount of money so you’re not really paying them tons of money. But for them working remotely on their own time. It’s extra income, it’s good for them, and it’s also taking the burden off your shoulders.
The second reason you should be hiring an intern. And this is interesting to me because I’ve been in business for decades and I think that I know everything. Because I’ve had my experiences, I’ve made my mistakes. I’ve had my successes, and I’ve learned from everything. So I always feel like the way that I do things is the best way to do things. But what you’ll find with an intern or with new interns, is they’re gonna have their way of doing things, which means it might not be the same as the way you do them. It might be better, it might be worse, or it might just be a new way of doing it. And believe it or not in the past and even now when working with people. I’ve learned how to do things in a different way. This might cut time, this might cut money, this might be more effective. But either way, when you’re working with interns, of course, they’re going to have their processes and their ways of doing things. Of course, the majority of the time. They’re going to be learning from you because like I said, You’re the one with the experience. You’re the one with the knowledge and you’re the one that has been running the business for so long. So they’re gonna learn a lot from you, but you might learn a couple tidbits from them. So pay attention to how they work. If you wonder how they did something or why they did something that way. Definitely reach out to them or talk to them about and say, you know, what did you do here and how did you do this and why did you do it this way? And let them explain themselves. Let them talk you through the process that they went through to get from point A to point B. And you might be surprised they might learn a new trick.
Speaking of tricks, this kind of rolls into step number three or reason number three why you should hire an intern. They’re good at technology for the most part, most interns are going to be younger. They’re going to be tech savvy, used to using social media, used to using phones, used to using computers, they’re used to using technology. So not to say that you’re not good at technology because you probably are if you’re a business owner, maybe you’re not but interns are going to be better at technology, which means you’re you’re going to see an efficiency with speed. They’re going to be getting things done quicker. You’re going to potentially again, like we talked about seeing some new ways of doing things maybe they know of an app or a website that you can use to do a certain task that you didn’t know about and they’re just going to be used to it because they’ve been using it for maybe years or months. And so I think technology is a big barrier for a lot of business owners, at least in my experience. I’ve noticed a lot of people out there are just not tech savvy. They might be good at running a business at creating products. Maybe they’re good at, you know, crafting something, whether they’re creating a product that they can sell, and they made a simple Shopify website, but they’re not good at building their brand or marketing or making videos or making social media posts and so on and so forth. So, these interns that you might hire are going to be really good at that. And they’re going to just take that tech load off your back, and you’ll probably learn a lot from them as well.
Reason number four is where things get interesting, at least in my opinion. Because what turns out to be a temporary intern that you just need for say a couple of weeks or a couple of months or maybe even just for a couple of days. You just need someone to figure out how to do something really quick. It turns out that sometimes, even though it’s temporary, this person has impressed you in a variety of ways to the point where now you actually need them for more things. And this could lead to an assistant or a manager or someone in charge of one of your departments. So think of an internship, not as Oh, I’m just hiring someone temporarily. Think of it kind of like a trial period, like you’re testing them out to see if they do well. If they add value to your business or your company or your product or your brand. Well keep that value in the company, use them for other things and figure out where else they can add value in your business. Then maybe you can hire them full time or even part time, but at least they move from internship to employee or contractor. And that’s really interesting to me because a lot of times in companies and businesses they’re just going out and hiring people. It’s like HR departments looking at resumes for recruiters looking at resumes. And companies filling positions. And to me that doesn’t make a lot of sense because you’re hiring people and you don’t know if they’re any good at what they say they’re good at just based on their resume. But with an intern, you’re either doing an unpaid or pay that depends on what it is if it’s a school credit, or if you’re paying them, you know, an hourly rate, you’re figuring out if they’re actually good at what they say they are and there’s no strings attached. It’s just an internship. If they don’t do well, you can just cut ties to the internship. If they do well you can continue on and that’s what I like about it.
This kind of again spills into a number five which is they may become brand advocates so what I mean by that is as they become valuable in your business. You realize they’re good at what they do. They like your business because they’re sticking with it. Maybe you offered them a position and they said okay, yeah, I love your brand. I like your business. I like your products. I want to join your business. I want to join your company. If they accept an offer from you. It’s most likely they like your business. So they’re not just doing it for the paycheck. Yeah, it helps. But usually when people work for somebody else, it’s because they really want to work for that business, especially if you’re a startup, not like a fortune 500 company. So they might start promoting your business on their social media. They might start telling their friends and family to buy your products or go to their website or download your app because they genuinely like what you do. So inadvertently, you’ve just got yourself a brand ambassador or brand advocate or whatever you want to call it. Somebody who’s promoting you. And of course, because they work for your business, they might be wearing your T-shirt. They might be talking to people about you know, people said, Who do you work for? Say I work for company XYZ Oh, I’ve heard of that. What’s it like? And they’ll say, Oh, it was the best company ever, best product ever. They might be at a party or at a concert or at an event or with friends or wherever. And all of a sudden they’re promoting your product or your brand because people simply ask them what they do for a living. So you might just get these, especially if you have a lot of interns like if you have, you know anywhere between two to five or five to 10 interns, you have a bunch of interns and you have all these people promoting your product. Because they like what you do and they want to advertise you because the more business you get, the better they look because they’re making your business look good. So they might, you know, they might think to themselves, well, if I can promote this person’s business, and it does well, they might hire me, instead of just being an intern. So it benefits them too. You know, it’s a two way better, beneficial relationship. And so I definitely recommend that you should at least think about hiring interns, whether it’s for simple tasks, difficult tasks, or for a more hands-on approach to various departmental initiatives that you have in your business. I’m right in the middle of interviewing them. I will probably hire two to three interns this week alone. So you should do the same thing when you have a chance and let me know why else you think interns are valuable to your business? I want to know how to leave them in the comments. Let me know I always answer and I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are. And as always, I will see you in next week’s episode.
