Student Intern or COO - Eight Steps to a student-COO

In late 1994, Web browsers were less than a five year old invention. I had decided to build my first web-site for a client. I needed an web expert! Since Monster.com, Guru.com and eLance.com were still several years away, I ended up searching resumes in a Usenet newsgroup.

It was there that I found one of the first HTML-based resumes ever posted. I hired a kid fresh out of college to help me build a business.

With this new grad's instrumental help, we grew our company (Destiny Software) from a two man shop into a $17 million a year business employing 120 full-time people.

So how did I take advantage of this kid who was a student just 6 months ago?

Did I have him do my filing?

Perhaps organize my sales prospects into a rolodex?

Perhaps manage my computer backups?

Actually, I had him:
- build and deploy the corporate web site;
- formulate an R&D project given some broad business constraints;
- and architect a solution that we sold to Bank of America to create one of the first online banking systems in the world.
He was the Chief Architect of this application.

Not long ago, I was working in an office where I overheard a co-worker say, "she's an intern! She can sharpen pencils for 3 hours if we are late for our meeting with her." I shuddered.

One of my favorite passages from Lao Tzu's ancient wisdom is something like "if you treat people with disrespect, then they will return the favor, if you don't trust people, then they will become untrustworthy."

The other side of Lao Tzu's coin is the one that has served me well in business, namely - If you believe in a person's potential, then they will believe in their own potential. If you give someone lots of room to grow, then they will grow quickly!

This belief has been born out time and again over the years. More often than not, if these beliefs are properly applied to new hires or interns, you will often get amazing results (and at a minimum an unbelievable business value).

Here are my eight steps to a successful internship:

1) Craft your assignments to their strengths. Understand the student's talent. A quick interview will tell you if they are creative, strategic, diligent, reliable and/or efficient. Chances are they won't be all of those!

2) Set expectations. These people have usually never worked in a business world before. Don't expect them to know proper cell phone etiquette (don't answer it during a meeting in case you didn't know either!) or how to answer a phone properly. Tell them what deliverables you want, how you want them prepared (examples are good) and when you want them.

3) Give them swiss cheese assignments. If you are like me, I'm too busy to manage an intern! So I let them manage themselves. If they have 2-3 backup projects that add value to the organization and which they can pickup and work on whenever they get stuck on their primary (and possibly more challenging assignment).

4) Never get upset with a first mistake. If you think they won't make any mistakes, then PLEASE DON'T HIRE THE INTERN! (In fact, don't hire any people. You'll be disappointed.) Mistakes are huge learning opportunities and should be approached in an "teachable moment" manner.

5) Its okay to start to showing annoyance on the second and third repeats of the same mistake.

6) Hold "relfective learning" sessions periodically. Guess what? They won't be the only one learning things.

7) Feed 'em BHAGs. The projects should be Big-Hairy-Audacious-Goals. Jim Collins makes a terrific argument for how well goals that stretch the imagination can captivate and motivate project members. Don't be afraid to task them with great responsibilities. If you could clone yourself, what other projects might you try to accomplish? Use that to start your list.

8) Give them a big title - and make them back it up! Nothing feels better when you are first starting than being able to put a big title on your resume and pointing to accomplishments which prove it was legit.

It is on this last point that I will leave you.

With step 7 & 8 in mind, I have opened a position for a Chief Operating Officer intern. The new COO will help me build an internet marketing property called Corporate Weather. Making them a COO (and giving them real COO responsibilities) also helps me compete with the big financial service, pharmaceutical and pro sports enterprises that compete for the same pool of interns.

Keep your eyes open for CorporateWeather.com - powered by an intern turned COO named David Miller!

- Skip