It’s May, which means it’s almost time for summer interns! Our interns are a great asset to the BL team, and we can’t wait to welcome the newest group to BL. We pride ourselves on our intern program, and we’ve worked hard to create a program that benefits BL, our interns, and our clients. After all, an internship is just the first phase of a career – interns’ graduate from school and become entry level workers, grow and learn to become mid-level staff, and someday become the next generation of leaders. Our interns will be working alongside you someday, which is why it’s so important to begin developing their skills now.
While interns can be used to do basic tasks like deliver proposals and pick up lunch, a good program knows they are capable of so much more. When we talk to former BL interns, one of the things they appreciate most is that we let them work on real projects. Letting your interns get real, hands-on experience will give them knowledge beyond what they’ve learned in school. For clients, this means even our junior-most staff members can hit the ground running on your projects.
At BL, our interns have a set process they go through that helps them be successful in the program and beyond. We assign each intern a supervisor and a peer coach to help on-board them and get them up to speed on projects. Interns go through many of the same orientation sessions that our regular employees do, and they get an abbreviated version of our employee orientation packet, which lays out exactly what interns can expect during their first day, first week, and beyond. At the end of the summer, we ask interns to present what they worked on and their overall experience to the Senior Leadership team giving them a chance to show off how they’ve contributed and what they’ve learned. And finally, we always have supervisors sit down with interns before they leave to give them feedback on their performance. Interns go through the same evaluation process as employees and gain helpful perspectives on where they excel and where they could improve.
At BL, we’ve had great success with our intern program – in fact, you’ve probably worked with some prior BL interns without even knowing it. In the last five years alone, we’ve had over a dozen employees accept full-time positions after interning with us, and they are all still dedicated employees. One former BL intern is now a Principal and just celebrated 15 years with us. This year we will have 20 interns across all disciplines who will help us deliver successful projects to our clients. We can’t wait for you to meet them!