IndieBiz - How to get an Indie Intern

Intern’s are like the holy grail for independent artists. Someone who will work with me on my dream scheme FOR FREE because they actually care to learn about what I DO? Amazing. Companies with good reputations and payrolls don’t have the same feeling about interns, I don’t think. From certain perspectives interns are largely a hassle, and in some cases are just taken on to give grunt work to, meet grant quotas, or get tax benefits. While I think this is unfortunate, I will admit that in my limited experience interns often do tend to have low follow-through and make a lot of irritating beginner mistakes. Not shocking given they are beginners and frequently are working for free.

Getting to teach someone what you know can show you just how far you’ve come with your craft, and remind you what you love about it. The smallest amount of support, physical or emotional, can honestly make the year and get you through the lonely broke times inevitable in any intrepid endeavor like your very own indie arts business.

Play your cards right and you might end up with some truly fantastic new allies and friends.

There’s are lots of ways to get an intern I’m sure, but here are the 2 steps. yes, there are only 2 steps, for intern getting success (Keeping the intern, that’s a different blog post, coming soon, but finding a good one will help too):

1. Write a Call for the Perfect Person.

File this under “if you build it, they will come” but it’s more like if you can describe exactly who would be perfect for the job, they’ll appear. Your call needs to connect to just one person, if it’s the right person, and so it should sound like you. Finding the right intern is like finding soulmate.. well, sort of. An indie intern will work with your in your space (for many of us this our homes) and they will look pretty closely at your art and business practice and, if they’re any good, ask you some tough questions. You need to be able to get along with them and get what you need out of the experience, so make sure you’re not misleading. Tell people straight up what they can expect in a voice that sounds a bit like you, and when they decide to join you you’ll be on steady ground. Here’s a fictional example:

Note! This internship is unpaid. You will learn sound engineering skills in a relaxed but professional home studio environment and get to work on recording with singer / songwriter artists and acoustic instrumentalists, and sometimes we’ll have tea and talk about the Georgian calendar. (Interest in the Georgian Calendar not required).

Not appealing to everyone, but trust me, there are talented people out there itching to get that experience and meet those people and willing to laugh at your questionable calendar humour! I’m goofing around, but you get my point: tell the truth, sound like you.

2. Circulate the call.

Really. I mean it. Circulate. Email it to a carefully selected list of your friends, and contacts who might have a friend. Something like 80% of jobs are gotten through a friend of a friend - it’s called “the strength of weak ties” don’t be shy, work this angle!) Post it on Craigslist. Post it on your blogs (you crazy blogger you). When you post it on the web, if you can, use good tags like: Intern and Your Craft and Your City so your call will be optimized a bit for when interns try to Google for their futures.

Another time-tested tactic is to find out if there’s a local school with a class related to what you need your intern to do, then write the teacher a query and attach your call. In some cases, you’ll be ignored. In the other extreme, you’ll get a whole class of marketing students working for a full semester on competing versions of your business plan.

Art has always been made with networks of people trading and helping and contributing for free. Students mostly understand they’ll need to pay their dues, and increasingly are looking to do the due-paying time in unconventional, inspiring, empowering learning environments. Like your living room!

Write the call, circulate it and get yourself that intern, ie; Get help and give your insight and experience in return. It’s fricken symbiotic!

These may be obvious points… I’m sure I missed tons of stuff. For example, I think there are some great government programs in Canada to match businesses with interns and help them both get paid a bit. Do you know of any of these? Help and feedback are, as always, appreciated… oh! and thanks to Natalie for mentioning her new intern in her post today and inspiring this post in return! Nat- you’ll have to let us know how it’s going!