The clock is ticking: don’t waste your summer interns

You hired a summer intern. Congratulations, now, don’t waste them.

Most internship programs default to one of two failure modes: the intern becomes free labor for the tasks nobody wants, or they become a guest who is politely ignored until August. Both send them back to campus with nothing to show and nothing to say about you.

Here’s what an intern needs from their summer assignment:

One real project with their name on it. Not a slice of someone else’s work — something they own start to finish, however small. “I built the onboarding checklist the team still uses,” beats “I shadowed people” in every interview they’ll ever have.

A reason behind the work. Interns don’t need the work to be glamorous. They need to understand why it matters. Connect the task to the customer, the goal, the bottom line. Context turns what seems like busy work into learning.

Honest feedback, early. Don’t save it all for an exit review they can’t act on. A ten-minute check-in each week teaches them more than a glowing final evaluation.

One good introduction. The most valuable thing you can give an intern isn’t a paycheck, it’s a name. Introduce them to one person worth knowing, and you’ve given them a network they didn’t have in May.

A great internship is the opposite of everything broken about modern hiring. It’s a deliberate, human investment in one person. Treat it that way, and you don’t just help a student — you build a future hire, an advocate, and proof that your organization knows how to develop people.