TM - April 2008 - (Page 4) [from the editor] by Mike Prokopeak I “I A Tale of Two Internships t was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens opens his classic novel A Tale of Two Cities with that memorable statement. That single line captured the volatility and turbulence of the period leading up to and following the French Revolution of 1789, but as with all great literature, it also communicated a universal sentiment that transcends its particular context. Take, for example, the subject of our cover story this month: internships as a succession planning tool. In many respected and had opportunities to learn, but unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case. The menial tasks simply felt like punishment. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and at the end, I decided to go another direction with my career. My second internship with a newspaper publisher was much more positive and ultimately launched me on my writing career. From the word go, I was learning the ins and outs of reporting, working directly with editors, doing on-the-street interviews, participating in brainturn their attention to every aspect of their people programs and finetune them to attract and engage the workers their enterprises need to meet future goals. As our cover story by Talent Management Associate Editor Agatha Gilmore illustrates, internship programs can be a valuable succession planning tool for talent managers as they look to find and develop top talent to fill immediate needs. But transforming an internship program into a valuable talent pool requires talent managers to be strategic in how they structure and support it. Simply having an intern program isn’t enough. Check out the story on page 44 for tips on leveraging interns for talent success. It’s not just about interns. Smart talent managers understand they need a robust set of tools and strategies to meet the needs of the 21stcentury enterprise. That means attention to sometimes overlooked talent development programs, such as internships. But it also means thinking creatively and developing programs to recruit nontraditional workers, including retirees or stayat-home moms who want to re-enter the workforce. In many ways, these are the best of times and the worst of times. We’re facing real demographic challenges, but we have many more methods and practices to answer those challenges. What are you doing to make the best of it? Drop me a line at mikep@ talentmgt.com. As the pool of available talent shrinks and competition rises, it’s important for talent managers to turn their attention to every aspect of their people programs. storming meetings and writing real stories. I got genuine feedback on my work and grew as a writer. Again, there was no shortage of typical intern abuse: answering phones, compiling tedious event listings and torturously copy editing classified advertising. But it was a small price to pay for being meaningfully involved in work that was relevant and important. It was the best of times. At the end of that internship, I put the skills and capabilities I developed to immediate use when I stepped into a full-time position that opened up internally. It launched my career in publishing and opened exciting new avenues. I’d like to think I offered the company real value, too, as I worked my way up through the ranks and eventually took on increasingly significant editorial responsibilities. As the pool of available talent shrinks and competition rises, it’s important for talent managers to ways, an internship is a wonderful time in our careers, full of new opportunities and alive with possibility. It’s a chance to put our education into practice and finally get down to the work of creating our future. We build up meaningful experience to pad our resume, but also make significant decisions about the direction of our career. But in reality, it also can be a frustrating time, a time when we grapple with the inconsistencies between our expectations and the messy and inconvenient realities of working life. The best and worst are often wrapped up into one experience, but occasionally one outweighs the other. Such was the case with my first internship as an apprentice copy writer at a small advertising agency. There were the typical intern responsibilities: answering the phone, filing and running odd errands. I wouldn’t have minded the administrative work if I felt Mike Prokopeak Editorial Director mikep@TalentMgt.com April 2008 4 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com
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