Published in · 6 min read · Jul 26, 2022
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By Lora Kyle, Head of Global Talent Development
Intern season is upon us! This is the time of year when many companies welcome college students through their doors! This Thursday, July 28, 2022 is National Intern Day, a day created by WayUp in 2017. National Intern Day is a holiday dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the future leaders of the world: interns! At Chegg, we’re celebrating, too. As Chegg’s Head of Global Talent Development and creator of Chegg’s intern program more than 5 years ago, today I oversee the program’s design and execution as part of Chegg’s overall commitment to learning and development. I thought I would use this opportunity to share my top ten list for creating a successful internship program!
Fundamentally, you want the internship to be useful for your interns and your company. It’s a win-win for the intern and the company! Can they take what they have learned in their college environment and apply it in the workforce to not only help the company but also be useful to them when they return to their studies? Chegg interns tell us daily that this is one of the best elements of their internship: They feel that the work they are doing is really contributing to business goals and has a meaningful impact. If they are learning to code, will that code be used in a product? If they’re working in communications, will their writing be used on the corporate website or in emails shared with the company? If they are in HR, will their work help make policies more inclusive or can they make recommendations to our onboarding process that can be implemented?
To truly get an intern program off the ground, you will need executive buy-in. However, that involvement should not stop at headcount sign-off. Your intern program will benefit from executive involvement at each and every stage. At Chegg, we introduce all our interns at a company-wide All Hands meeting, hosted by our executives. Each executive hosts an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session where they share their career journey with the intern class and leave lots of time for Q&As. Through this, executives get to know our interns more deeply. Additionally, many Chegg executives make themselves available for mentoring discussions with interns not only in their groups, but across functions to support those interns who might want to develop into other areas. At the end of the internship, Chegg interns create a ‘Capstone’ presentation summarizing all their work and what they’ve learned during the summer, and our executives attend, including Chegg’s CEO, Dan Rosensweig.
Hopefully we’re emerging from the pandemic, but we may be heading into a recession and facing other macro-economic issues such as inflation. These are challenging times for many companies. Don’t shy away from discussing such topics with interns. At Chegg, interns are invited to all our company-wide meetings, as well as staff and team meetings. Being included in these meetings where such topics are discussed is vital for them to understand these macro challenges and hear how companies communicate them and address them.
Hearing the realities of the corporate world is important, but so is having fun! These are future candidates for your talent pool, but obviously they are also college students who like to socialize with their fellow interns and co-workers! Chegg hosts a plethora of events, from virtual or in-person networking events (We hosted a highly competitive scavenger hunt recently!) to a fun day out in San Francisco and New York!
At Chegg, we have approximately 2000 employees worldwide working in offices in the US, Israel, India, UK and Spain. We have employees who work fully remote, employees coming to our offices, and hybrid! Our workforce is diverse in all aspects, and it’s important that our interns reflect that. We have undergraduate interns and graduate interns. They’re not all just 18–22 years old, because as Chegg knows only too well, 23% of students are over 25 years old.
Diversity and inclusion are important to Chegg. Chegg interns are invited and encouraged to attend our Culture, Belonging & Diversity (CB&D) events, spanning our eight Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), and we also recently hosted a CB&D panel event specifically for our interns. The panel event focused on how to become a diversity, equity and inclusion advocate in your role and featured four Chegg employees who lead our ERGs.
A key component of our intern program is Intern Buddies. In addition to having an active intern manager, our interns also get a Buddy. Buddies establish a one-on-one relationship with their intern, first by welcoming their intern to Chegg, then by meeting with them regularly. They support interns through various touchpoints during the summer, and they also amplify their presence to the company. We also encourage all employees to reach out to interns in their departments and beyond. Employees are open to zoom coffee conversations or in-person lunches, and interns are strongly encouraged to schedule such meetings.
Think about what your company can offer an intern. What is different from every other company? At Chegg, our mission is help students save time, save money, and get smarter in order to improve the overall return on educational investment. Our customers are students! Their input, opinions and contributions are crucial to the success of our products. Each year, our CEO Dan Rosensweig assigns all the interns a particular intern-wide project, something pertinent to what the company is working on. The interns provide candid feedback. We specifically ask them not to work with their managers on this project as we don’t want any biases. Interns provide the feedback directly to Dan, and our executives read every single feedback comment. The interns help to contribute to the future direction of our products. What’s your intern differentiator?
We want interns to work on projects together, we want them to socialize together, and we want them to create a community while they’re here. Employee engagement and job satisfaction increases when employees feel part of a community. There are many ways to do this, from events, social outings, and Slack channels dedicated to ‘interns-only.’ Chegg also looks to create a community beyond their internship to stay in contact with them via LinkedIn with Chegg Intern alumni groups.
Allocate a budget to pay your interns. Chegg firmly believes the interns of today are the leaders of tomorrow. But we also know many barriers exist that prevent college students from participating in an internship. Chief among them are unpaid internships. In addition to pay, consider other perks such as relocation and housing stipends to offset the cost of traveling to your office location and help interns with extra housing costs.
Add a philanthropic volunteer activity to support a local community initiative or have your interns work for your company foundation for the day. This is a great way to inspire your interns to give back to the community they live in (even if it’s just for the summer) while also providing some good with your company’s name on it. Some initiatives our interns have donated their time to have been supporting local food banks and community gardens. Since one of Chegg.org’s initiatives focuses on addressing food insecurity on campus, this affords our interns with the opportunity to help other students in need while also contributing directly to Chegg’s mission of supporting students!
