Hiring interns

Intern selection is really important. You hire a wrong intern & it’s equivalent to going down the drain.

Firstly see for what purpose are you choosing the intern? write it down and see the skills required for those. Add those skills in the internship before posting so that it’s easier for you to sort.

If the work isn’t much, you might actually not need an intern as there is a lot of communication & management overhead which comes. So be sure if you really need an intern. Like for me, having a design intern & SEO intern makes sense as I have no knowledge of the domain & finding the right person would result in a win win for everyone. For Content writing also, it makes sense to find the perfect person as I don’t have much time.

Choose the internships and put them in shortlist section and call them one by one in afternoon/evening. Best if it’s a weekend. Then you can call them anytime. No need to ask them for the best time to call.

Write a writeup before calling and be very clear about the tasks you need them for.

1. Introduce yourself?
2. Ask them who they are?
3. Tell them about the work and ask them if they have done anything similar? If yes, go deep inside that.
4. Give them a well written assignment and text, whatsapp & send on internshala and send them.
5. Ask how much time would they be able to commit per day/week.
6. Ask them the reason for doing this intern and see if you are justifying this reason. If not, then please don’t hire them.
7. Record these calls so that you can always revisit them back. I literally forgot most of the details

Maintain a sheet containing logs & your experience and feels after the first talk along with the status. Use color codes to help you there.

These are a few learnings from my first time with hiring an intern. You may contact the author at me@abhinavrai.com