Business Class
When President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness was tasked with handling the shortage of engineers in the U.S., it turned to interns. Using a tradition dating back to the centuries-old apprentice tradition, the council is relying on industry to start earlier in training its next generation of workers. In August, the White
House announced commitments from
top companies to create 6,000 new
engineering internships.
A company’s internship program
can affect its ability to attract top talent and shape its brand—and even its
industry. Too many companies think of
internships solely as an audition for the
intern, often forgetting that their intern
is simultaneously evaluating them as
an employer. Moreover, that “
insignificant” intern may be an undiscovered
industry prodigy. In the late ’60s both
Universal Studios and Hewlett-Packard
had interns with tremendous potential,
but only one of them was able to hold
on to that talent.
Hewlett-Packard CEO Bill Hewlett
received an interesting call from a
12-year-old in 1967 asking about computer parts for a project he was working on. Twenty minutes later, Hewlett
offered Steve Jobs his first internship
putting screws into frequency counters
on an assembly line.
“I remember my first day, expressing
complete enthusiasm and bliss at being
at Hewlett-Packard to my supervisor, a
guy named Chris—telling him that my
favorite thing in the whole world was
electronics,” Jobs said in a 2010 interview with Playboy magazine.
Like Jobs, at age 17 Steven Spielberg
kicked off his career with an unpaid
internship at Universal Studios after a
family friend made a life-altering introduction. As an intern, Spielberg wasn’t
officially allowed on set, but that didn’t
stop him from sneaking on regularly and
networking his way into any meeting he
Brighten Your
Intern Program
Harnessing the
creativity, drive and
energy of students
can be a real asset
to your company.
And best of all, great
interns can beget
great employees
BY GEORGE WEINER
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
RANDY LYHUS
