Who needs interns?

Hi, Habr!

In the last article, we generally looked at the career track of a programmer from an RPG point of view. Now let's imagine that we just started the game “IT-career” from the first level and consider in detail this first level - an internship. Moreover, for greater immersion, we study the internship from the business.

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When trainees are not needed?

The key mistake of many start-up businesses is the desire to recruit interns. The illusion is simple: “now we will find a cheaper man, we will quickly train him, and he will do everything himself”. So it may happen, but statistically the probability of this event is negligible. As a rule, trainees who are pumped up in small companies, quickly realize the breadth of the labor market and go to where everything is better organized, more prospects and salaries are higher.

In addition, interns for start-up businesses are disastrous. They distract the time of shareholders to teach the beginner. At the start, it is necessary to engage in sales and development of production in the turbo mode, otherwise you may not reach the stage of stability. Especially a clinical case when they take an intern to a site that they themselves do not understand. This always results in lost time and frustration for both parties.

At the micro-business stage (which means “micro” - see Government Decree No. 101 and 209-FZ ), it is important to quickly recruit a team of independent experienced professionals who will cover the main areas: sales, manufacturing, finance, and customer operations. And only then, under these comrades, it is already possible to recruit easier people. I hope someday this primitive knowledge will be included in the program of high school or, at least, the first courses of economic universities.

Who are the interns useful for?

When your company already has a steady team of leading experts who know what to do and how, and have already more or less set up work, you can begin to take interns.

The less developed the company, the less responsible work can be trusted to beginners. At the very beginning, I would take interns only for office management, document management, setting up meetings and other simple activities. In fact, this is a secretary or "assistant director general" - for someone you like.

In an IT company, I recommend taking interns in core specialties (programmers, designers, analysts, etc.) only under the following conditions:

• you have 50 people or more;
• you steadily generate profits for several months;
• you have formed a stable stream of small tasks;
• your growth is so rapid that you do not have time to take on the market of established specialists (which is unlikely with a company size of up to 100-200 people).

If at least one of these points is not fulfilled - think 100 times before posting a trainee's vacancy - it’s too early for you to think about raising a new generation.

If you are already confidently earning, growing rapidly and you have accumulated a stream of routine - you can begin to take people for an internship. The main benefits of this - leading experts unload their expensive time from the small work that beginners can do. Plus, your leads are trained to educate other people - this is a useful skill for development in a top manager.

Immediately, I would like to say that growing up a person in one company from an intern to timild or art director is an extremely rare successful event. I have seen such three or four times in 11 years of IT career. In our country, after the USSR, the culture of long work in one company disappeared somewhere, although in Europe and Asia it is considered the norm to devote one corporation to more than 10 years.

How to hire them?

The main sources of young shoots are:

• hh.ru (for IT specialties);
• rabota.ru;
• job.ru;
• job fairs;
• close relations with the departments of universities and colleges.

During an interview with people of this level, I check the availability of meta-skills:

• the ability to competently express thoughts in writing (ask to write an essay);
• the ability to find a common language with people;
• a strong desire to learn (when you talk to him about his profession - his eyes light up and he starts to spark ideas);
• a neat and healthy appearance (nobody needs them forever, sluts will annoy team members, and sports discipline and make a person energetic).

You can shower me with tomatoes, but, unfortunately, in our schools, of all the above items, at best, they plant the first one. And even then, for a 1-2 year uni course, Russian bullet crashes out of most students' heads. So, all hope for a good upbringing in the family.

If everything is OK with meta-competences, I look at what crafts the person has already created in his future profession. A good intern programmer has already tried to do some programs on delphs, simple PHP sites or databases in Access (ideally, forks to Linux or USB drivers, but this is a lot of luck).

There is no point in tormenting a person with questions during an interview for an internship. It is necessary to try him in action. It will not work - nothing terrible. No matter how it sounds in the style of "social Darwinism", but the interns are cannon fodder. From tens and hundreds remain units. Someone even understands that IT is not his, and goes into another industry. Someone does not want to deal with sites on PHP, but wants to make drivers for C - also an option. Someone just does not want to work.

In general, do not place excessive hopes on them, so as not to get upset once again.

How to develop them?

The key point is that each intern must have a curator. If there is no curator, you simply waste the company’s money and the trainee’s time. One curator may have several interns (I would limit myself to two, based on personal experience).

Tasks of the curator:

• to cultivate labor discipline (time to go to work, keep promises);
• integrate the novice into the team (introduce people, drive for dinners, talk about optional activities);
• to give professional literature and other methodological manuals in accordance with the level of the trainee;
• gradually increase the complexity of the tasks and help if a person has tried everything, but he doesn’t work.

The most frequent mistake of novice supervisors is to do all the work for an intern if that did not work out the first time. This is absolutely wrong - this behavior demotivates and pampers the beginner. 2-3 times is enough to do so, and the intern’s independence will evaporate - you will have to say goodbye or re-educate him, but with another supervisor.

If something failed with the ward - ask him some leading questions, let him google, try again. Give links to solutions to similar problems, let him research and study. Only knowledge gained through independent practice will be learned for a long time.

Another issue in which oversights are often made by inexperienced managers is that the trainee’s rise too quickly, both in office and in income. I believe that it is possible to transfer a novice to the position of "specialist" only after he confidently, independently and consistently copes with the tasks of a certain level.

I repeat - to pamper people is extremely dangerous . You over-inflate their self-esteem ahead of time, and they will think that you can not finish the work to the end, but the increase will still be. So you harm both the intern and yourself. Read more about pink unicorns in fragile heads here .

Summary

It only makes sense to take interns if you have a mature enough company. If you yourself are not very well standing on your feet - take in the team only experienced professionals.

Raising trainees is a delicate matter, comparable to raising children. It is very easy to harm, and to grow a good specialist is a real work.

That's all about the interns from the business.
Good luck!

Thank you tym32167 for help in finalizing the article.