On Friday, Chinwag waved goodbye to Gregory, our first tech intern. It was an experiment, which proved extremely fruitful for Chinwag, and hopefully, Gregory too.
For a company that sits at the S end of SME, combined with some control freakery thanks to yours truly, taking on an intern would be a challenge on a number of fronts. Could we find the right person? Would they learn anything? Did we really have time to make it work?
Previous internships had worked well, with an editorial intern progressing into a full-time role, but we learnt just how much staff time is needed. Tricky for a small company that finds itself stretched at the best of times.
About the time we waved Gregory off, a tweet from Loic Le Meur (@loic) popped up, agreeing with Seth Godin’s take on internships,
"I think internships are overrated. Most of the time, the employer thinks he's doing the intern a favor, but he doesn't trust the interns to do any actual thoughtful, intelligent work worth talking about. And to be fair, most of the time the interns are busy hiding, not grabbing responsibility but instead acting like they're in school, avoiding hard work and trying to get an A."
Pretty cynical. Perhaps this applies more to internships within large organisations, because that’s not been the experience at Chinwag. He’s right about one thing, there’s little point in having an intern if you’re not going to let them do anything.
