Internships – Creating High Impact Experiences

Offering high impact internships takes intentional planning and implementation but increases intern engagement, learning, and desire to stay with an organization long-term. Integrating a few of the ideas below could lead to a more productive experience for both your interns and your organization.

Engagement

Interns are expected to fully engage:

  • Co-create learning goals
  • Be challenged
  • Work on projects important to the organization
  • Produce work samples they can share with future employers
  • Contribute to organizational decision-making
  • Have a chance to fail

Exposure

Interns are exposed to diverse:

  • Ways of thinking and solving problems
  • Strategies for managing and prioritizing work
  • Methods of communication
  • Projects and tasks
  • Teams, people and organizational levels

Relationships

Interns build substantive connections with:

  • Interns and coworkers on immediate work team
  • Interns and staff members on other teams
  • Supervisors and other mentors committed to intern success
  • Individuals who might become important networking contacts

Reflection

Interns are asked to reflect on:

  • Progress towards stated learning goals
  • What they still need to learn
  • What they value
  • Who they are & who they want to become
  • Career development goals & next steps

Feedback

Interns receive rich performance feedback:

  • Regularly scheduled informal check-in meetings
  • Periodic formal performance evaluations
    • From both supervisors and peers
  • Feedback should be focused on what they are doing well and how they could improve

High-impact Practices in Action

  • Ask interns what they want to learn and create/modify projects accordingly
  • Assign both individual and team projects
  • Plan social activities for interns
  • Have executives share career advice
  • Ask interns to write meeting agendas
  • Allow time for informational interviews
  • Require interns to write learning logs
  • Have interns present on their projects
  • Provide training in professionalism

For more examples and case studies, visit NACE.

All content references “High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter” by George Kuh (2008).