Association Executive - September/October 2007 - (Page 6)

Internship Programs By Matthew Zinman The Executive’s Role in bers; adding creativity; boosting morale; and broadening internal capabilities. Naturally, students benefit from gaining vital hands-on experience to prepare them for future success. It’s one thing for your association and your members to employ interns and entirely another to fully utilize their capabilities and achieve the greatest benefits for all involved. This article will focus on the elements most relevant to you as an executive: your leadership role to create an environment to foster success; the legal and financial considerations of having a program; and the opportunity as an industry leader to make a valued impact for your current members, future members (students), and others. assure program success is having buyin by senior management. CEOs can promote an employee culture that values a student’s abilities and contributions and instills an organizational commitment to provide interns with practical experience and training. The best internships go beyond on-thejob-training to balance productive work assignments with opportunities for training and development. The days of having interns do menial tasks have come to pass. Your program can reach its potential once those in your association view college students as vital to their success and they support the program accordingly. Executive buy-in needs to go beyond endorsement to include action. Be sure to build your internship program with the proper structure. A mong the distinctive qualities of a leader is the unique ability to make the kind of difference that creates and instills true satisfaction. One of the most valuable opportunities for you to make a positive impact for your association is also among the most meaningful. A student internship program can put your future members to work for your association and extend the value they contribute to your staff, your members, and your industry or profession. College students are highly capable, highly motivated and, if well managed, highly valuable. They can perform a variety of tasks, including researching, writing, making phone calls, and doing computer work. In fact, they may be more proficient in some fields than anyone on your staff, such as working with software programs like PowerPoint or those used for creative design. Students can increase productivity, as well as help your staff gain the time to complete their own higher-level tasks. The other benefits of having interns include, but are not limited to: grooming future employees and/or potential memASSOCIAT IO N EX EC U T IV E SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 Focus on What Matters Most — Expected Benefits Even with the proper resources, it takes genuine commitment and a Success Starts with You Among the most crucial factors to How to Structure an Internship To build an internship with the proper structure, you will need to: 1. Budget for program costs, such as campus recruiting, technology tools, and compensation; 2. Allocate proper staff resources and allot them time to manage the program; and 3. Invest in the cost and effort to develop program resources to support effective hiring, orientation, training, evaluation and sustained improvement. 6

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Association Executive - September/October 2007

Contents From the CEO The Executive's Role in Internship Programs 12 Weeks to Sink or Swim Book Beat Inside NYSAE Winning the War for Talent The Not-for-Profit Edge: Recruiting & Retaining Generation X Burnout Busters: 10 Ways to Cope When Work Gets Overwhelming Meeting in Atlantic City Save the Dates Index of Advertisers

Association Executive - September/October 2007

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