Interns are a fine balance

03/11/13 23:36:00    

By Michael Mealling

Pipefish is getting ready for its first cohort of interns this summer. When I was at Masten Space we generally had a cohort every single semester. Each semester we had far more applications than we could ever use so we had the luxury of choosing interns that had significant experience that we could use.

Today I read through the 50 internship applications from Georgia Tech. This summer we are going to try four (!!) interns: two UX/UI and two Machine Learning. Of the 50 applications I found four people who had experience and depth I can really use.

But also in that list of 50 students were undergrads with no work experience who I knew desperately needed something like this as an undergrad. It could really help start their career and make finding a job after graduation much easier. But from experience I know that managing two interns is work so managing four will be a challenge. But I hate that I can't give those inexperienced undergrads a chance.

I don't know exactly how I will do it but before the end of the year Pipefish's internships will have at least one inexperienced undergrad. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to balance grad vs undergrad and how to manage the resulting cohort of students with such wide ranges of experience?

After initialing posting this I found these useful links:

9 Tips for Hiring & Managing Interns at a Startup The Simplest Way to Manage An Intern Inside Your Startup Managing Interns - How to Find and Develop Yours