Entry by Ashley Cashen, Talent Acquisition and Retention Coordinator, digitalKnowledge
I canât believe that Bartâs internship is at the halfway mark. While he has plenty of work to show for his time with us, time really has flown by. I was sitting at my desk a week or two ago and realized that with the halfway point approaching, our mid-internship evaluation would be soon. I created an evaluation form prior to the start of the internship, but I wanted to make sure that the evaluation process was not just about filling out a form and filing it away â I wanted to use this experience to make sure that Bartâs second half of the internship was even better than the first.
I want to take the time to fully prepare for the evaluation with Bart and make sure that he is getting the most value from his time with us. As mentioned in my previous blog, Bart finished his three projects just a few weeks into his internship â so that is the first place I wanted to start when preparing for the evaluation. I will utilize the leaders at dK, as well as Bartâs mentor, to find a few projects for Bart to work on through the end of his internship. However, I do not want to just hand Bart projects without getting a sense for what he would like to work on. Our industry is very complex and there are a lot of moving parts, so while it is impossible to give an intern a taste of all of those things, it is possible to find out Bartâs âwish listâ of areas where he would like more exposure.
The next area I wanted to touch on during Bartâs evaluation is training and education opportunities. At dK we encourage all of our employees, interns included, to search for valuable training and continue their education. While I believe the internship, as a whole, is a learning experience for Bart â it is important to allow your intern to maximize their learning through external training.
Finally, I want to begin collecting feedback from Bart on ways that we can improve our internship in the future. With this being our first internship, we know there are areas we can improve on and continue to grow our internship program. It is important to let your intern know that these evaluations are open discussions and that they should not feel that they need to hold anything back.Â
It is also important to give constructive feedback to your intern so that they have an idea of a few things they can work to improve during their last half of the internship. If you are not completely honest during these evaluations, you are not being fair to your company or to your intern. Most interns want to know how they can improve so that they can continue to grow into a professional.
I plan to fully use this evaluation to help both Bart and digitalKnowledge grow and improve. If you do not take advantage of opportunities such as this, then you are denying both parties from a valuable experience.
