What if we CAN have a successful internship program?

Entry by Ashley Cashen, Talent Acquisition and Retention Coordinator, digitalKnowledge

Founded in 2003, digitalKnowledge is a smaller, but mighty IT consulting firm. Last fall it became very apparent that digitalKnowledge was missing out on a great opportunity – hosting an intern. When the idea first began circling the office, it made perfect sense. We are a smaller company, but that lends to our unique office culture – a culture that is a perfect educational environment for an undergrad intern.

Several months later, here we are, with the first dK internship program well under way. The process to get here consisted of a lot of research and conversations pondering that never-ending question, what if? What if we don’t have enough work to keep the intern busy? What if we can’t pay the intern enough? What if we don’t have the staff to oversee the intern? And so on, and so on.

Well, now we are asking ourselves this question – What if we can have a successful internship program? Our intern, Bart started on May 24^th and is already making a big difference in our company – he has helped us reach a large internal goal of updating one of our primary software systems.

Now there was a lot of work done in between the decision of hosting an intern and Bart walking in the door that Monday. I’ll paraphrase all of the work into three phases: research, preparation, and delegation.

Research – Since this is our first intern, the first step we took was researching different funding options for small, start-up companies. We came across the perfect partner for our internship endeavor – Interns for Indiana through Purdue University. This organization’s main focus is matching Indiana companies and students in internships to work towards preventing “brain drain.” This organization offered both funding and assistance in finding us a student from Purdue University that matched the qualifications and criteria we were looking for. And that’s the story of digitalKnowledge & Bart.

Then came the preparation. We knew that the key to a successful internship was making sure we were prepared in ever aspect. The most important question was – what will Bart work on? And along came our 3-part project plan, which included details for three projects that Bart will work on, including skills needed, timeframe, goals, and steps of the project.

Finally, the tough part – delegation. In a company that works primarily on billable hours, it can be hard asking our staff to take time away from client projects to focus on internal tasks. But, as a company – we made that commitment. I’ve taken on the role as Internship Coordinator – ensuring that Bart has all of the resources that he needs while with us. One of our Senior Developers, Ryan, took on the very important role of Bart’s mentor. For any of those considering an internship, my one piece of advice up until this point is – assign your intern a mentor in the department they will be working in. This has proven to be key in making sure Bart has both the educational and positive environment an intern needs.

Things are going exceptionally well and dK is more than happy with their decision to host an intern. Stay tuned to see how our first internship plays out!