Blogtern Natalia Rosario writes about the ideal internship experience including how supervisor can provide constructive feedback to the intern. This is the third part of the series – The BlogTern: Should You Pay Your Intern?, The Blogtern: Creating a Meaningful Internship Experience.
The Blogtern: Constructive Feedback
By: Natalia Rosario – LinkedIn and Twitter
Interns want constructive feedback from supervisors. Interns want to know how they can improve and what they’re doing well. Here’s a couple tips for supervisors when giving feedback:
- Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up: Sit them down and discuss the outcomes of their tasks. Ideally you will find a place outside the office to convey feedback. Interns need honest feedback. They need to how their work is contributing to the organization.
- Be Constructive: It’s important to remember that most interns are new to local government. It may take a while for an intern to understand the details of local government. Provide frequent feedback and make suggestions for improvement, and note when they do something well – a little encouragement goes a long way!
Interns don’t ask for much – just don’t crush our spirits too quickly!
My ideal intern experience?
For me, getting a paycheck and having the opportunity to learn about local government outside the classroom is ideal. I suppose I’m just easy to please!
I enjoy meeting new people during my internship opportunities. Building a network becomes easier when you’re plugged into an organization/institution.
Also, and I can’t stress this enough, please take your intern to lunch. Your intern gets hungry around noon and needs socialization too! Free food is ideal!
I hope this gives you insight into the modern-day internship experience! Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions on the topic, and toss some more potential blog topics my way!