Terry Prone: Summer job or a Transition Year internship is a rite of passage with unchanging rules

'Now and again you get someone you hate to relinquish back into the educational system because they’re such a productive joy to have around.'

We have an intern working in my company. You don’t need to know her name or anything about her background. I’ll share just one fact with you.

Last week, I asked her to undertake a task. I didn’t specify a deadline but the task bounced back to me, perfectly executed, in a short space of time. I sent her a message saying thank you and got this wonderful reply, which read: “You’re welcome, happy to help.”

I had nearly forgotten that response, so resigned am I in the face of the more common and more negative “no problem” or the even meaninglessly worse “no worries”.

The double blast of sunshine in those six words was magic, reminding me that sometimes you get lucky with summer jobbers and interns. Not often. But now and again you get someone who is clean, punctual, polite, energetic, and a good listener. Someone you hate to relinquish back into the educational system because they’re such a productive joy to have around.

My first boss, a man named Bunny Carr, deployed a rhetorical question about summer jobbers and interns: “Do I need to learn this person?”

That was the question, rhetorical because he could deduce the answer from our mutual glances.

After just two days (sometimes one), we would know that neither Bunny nor the rest of us were ever going to see or work with this individual again, ergo, we didn’t need to learn them.

Doesn’t mean we didn’t try. But, back in the day, we would always yield to client/friends who wanted their 15-year-old son or daughter to get a summer job with us.

Not anymore. Our first answer, now, is “if your kid wants a job with us, tell them to come directly to us and prove we need them”.

That cuts the number of interviews by more than 75%. Three out of four teenage hopefuls are possessed of such damp hopefulness that being told to paddle their own canoe and make their own contacts floors them so they never knock on our door, email us, or pitch up for a job interview with us.

Which, if you think about it, is the best HR/recruitment record you’ve ever encountered: Three out of four people disqualifying themselves before any AI scanner decides they’re not worth employing.

Talk about time-saving. Plus, their parent can’t be mad at the prospective employer if their son or daughter didn’t take the initiative.

Parents as spokespeople

Getting parents out of the loop cuts across a current problem where parents act as spokespeople for their offspring.

You ask the teenager a question. The teenager does a near-coma shrug. The parent explains that the teenager is really eager to get this internship or summer job.

You ask the question again, and again you don’t get an answer.

The parent then tells you that the teenager is a bit anxious. This may be true, but it is not going to be helped by outsourcing speech and thought to the parent.

Well, maybe it IS going to be helped because, in many cases, the double act has the grim flavour of practice about it. It works to the extent that the son or daughter knows that, if they avert their eyes and stay silent, an adult — usually one related to them — will take over. Problem solved.

Any trainer experienced in preparing young people for summer job or internship interviews knows that the only way to get near to the potential of the younger member of the family is to get the older member of the family out of the room — but that’s difficult.

It may be tempting to get blunt and say: “Look, is it YOU that wants the summer job or Lisa/Arthur?”

However, in this context, blunt is rarely helpful. I find an announcement helps.

OK, we’ve reached the point in this process where it has to be one-to-one, rather than a threesome, so do you want to go to the cafe on the corner for a coffee or are you happy to wait in another room here? Be about half an hour

The parent leaves and that both eases and complicates the situation. If nobody has suggested a medical reason for the young person’s social ineptitude, then a trainer can have reasonable confidence that direct short questions will begin to be answered.

They can also have confidence that stating that the trainer has a limited amount of time to devote to this session, so they cannot hang about for long silences, will move the process forward.

It may become clear that the unfortunate parent is an over-compensating complication and that the teenager, given clear guidance, will step up and do a creditable interview.

It has to be stressed that a summer job or a Transition Year internship is a rite of passage with unchanging rules.

Unchanging, unspoken rules, one of which goes back to the centuries-old saying that “he who pays the piper calls the tune” — the piper-payer being the employer.

Few employers can honestly remember the summer job teen they took on two years ago, and only a few more can recall details of the TY student taken on as an intern in the same period.

It goes back to the Bunny Carr question. If the answer is “I really don’t need to learn this young person”, that’s no harm from the employer’s point of view. The intern or summer jobber may be a waste of space, but what harm?

The only loser is the young person who fails to gain from what could be a life-enhancing experience.

Or — worse still — the young person who believes they really want to get the job or internship, but who fails during the application process. That can turn pre-existing problems such as social anxiety into externally confirmed personal failings.

It never has to have that result. The rules of such interviews are as follows:

• 1. Arrive on time;
• 2. Arrive dressed and groomed like you mean business;
• 3. Know everything it’s possible for an outsider to learn about the target company;
• 4. Deliver a firm, pleasant handshake;
• 5. Listen carefully to the incoming questions;
• 6. Look them in the eye;
• 7. Get their name and use it. However, you don’t have to browbeat them with it.
• 8. Answer in a way that stresses what you can do for the company — not the other way around.
• 9. Don’t present fears, inadequacies, and failures as selling points.
• 10. Thank them for their time at the end.

Underlying those 10 rules is a basic frame work that positions the other person as more important than the applicant.

While in front of a prospective employer, you’d better be ready to show what you know about their organisation and are the solution to at least one of their problems.

If they recruit you, prove them right.

And if they subsequently register how good you are, be like my intern.

Tell them that they’re welcome and you’re happy to help.