Indie.Biz - How to Keep an Indie Intern

This is the follow-up piece to How to Get an Indie Intern.

Getting someone to want to work with you on your dream scheme is only half the battle. Leading in a way that makes them continue to choose to spend their time with you is, I have found, the harder half, but when you do a good job, the benefits are unexpected and exponential.

Here is a start for a list of rules based on things I’ve learned, consider this an open list and please add your own!

How to Keep an Indie Intern

1. Don’t Ask Too Much.

Especially right off the bat at the beginning. Every organization, business, band, group has their own culture and unwritten guidelines … unless they’ve been wicked with the wiki, I guess, in which case, they’ll have large amounts of written culture. Either way, it’s lots for a new person to go through and it’ll take time. Give your indie intern work that informs them, like copy editing (checking for typos) on your press releases, bios, web site pages, stuff like that. They’ll help you catch bugs and learn a lot quickly about what you’re trying to do. Then they can either get on board, or bail, and the sooner you know which it’s going to be the better! If you overload them without letting them in, they won’t connect and you’ll lose talented people fast to other gigs.

2. Don’t Ask Too Little

Tell me if this sounds biased or crazy but it’s my feeling that the more hard-working, talented and suited to your organization you think your intern (or volunteer, or employee) is, the more time you should take to help them develop. With interns it might not seem worth your while, since they could be temporary, which can lead to you giving them pointless or thankless jobs, which is of no use to anyone. Boo! Instead, if there’s a glint of awesome in your intern, figure out a really good job, something you think might be uniquely fun for them and potentially great for you if they rock it - but not something that your current core business is riding on if they don’t - and let them at it.
3. Support their efforts.

If you give them a job, make sure you tell them why it’ll be important to the organization (which can just be you, of course, if you have a vision). Help them set reasonable deadlines and don’t get down on them if something happens to slow their progress. This takes all takes added energy, which you may not feel like you have, as you’re carrying a whole indie enterprise on your shoulders. And man, I sympathize. But with some effort and strategic planning on your part, it can pay off with epic proportions.

Here’s one example, totally made up, adapt it to your circumstances: you’re in a band and starting to record, and you’ve got a marketing intern really keen and, you notice, into art. Give them as a project to seek art contributions for your cover. First they’d write a call for it and run it past you, then make a list of places to post it and run that by you, then do the posting, gather submissions, organize them, narrow it down to the best.

At each stage, they need to check back in with you, get thanks and not just constructive criticism but really useful feedback and information. This is what they are getting in exchange for their labour, so give it to them, and do it in a way they’ll appreciate not resent. Keep setting your own bar high in terms of your communications with them. How organized are you? How accountable are you to what you say you’re going to do? How well did you prep them to do the job on their own? Don’t be hard on yourself, we’re all crappy at this stuff when we’re just starting out, just keep clear-eyed and trying to get better and good people (including interns) will appreciate your honest effort and be attracted to it.

You can evolve with a good intern, if you’re both going to be evolving anyway.

3. Don’t lose perspective.

Being the “boss” can distort perspective. It can make you be stricter with your underlings then you are with yourself (same thing can happen with teachers, you may haver noticed, especially when they’re over worked). This distortion is more likely to happen when stressed, if you feel your “power” is precarious because they caught you in a mistake, or if you get “triggered” as the brain people. Lots of things can make us all treat others rather poorly, and feel embarrassed later. Try to keep aware of those kinds of currents in yourself and others, because just being aware will help you ride emotions out. If, for example, they hand something in late, you gotta take a balanced view. It happens to the best of us, let’s be honest. If you’re seeing a pattern of low follow through, that’s another story (and it may have something to do with #2, or it may have little to do with you, either way - perspective!)

If you do completely screw up and lose somebody talented, again, perspective! Don’t freak out and make bigger issue. Just wish them the best, and keep trucking on. Remember: communication is probably 20% failure, and failures are full of information. One thing I did which I guess worked was take on more interns then I needed because more applied then I’d expected. I gave them all work and waited to see who lasted and survived the flux of Indyish over 3 weeks, and gave that person the position. By that point, they’d definitely earned it, and I continue to have a positive working relationship with some of the others to this day (1.5 years later).

Oook, that’s it for our time today and that’s a start! Marilis and Tessa, the first Indyish interns, also had some words about how to keep an indie intern here, and as always I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below.