Six steps to onboard interns and immediately engage them in your office
Intern presentation at Maryland Governor’s Office (Creative Commons License, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/9467045106)
Managing interns can seem intimidating, especially when you just stopped being one yourself. As a staffer in a state legislature or city council, you’re often in one of your first roles out of college, inundated with work, and still learning the ins and outs of the job. You’re then given a handful of students to manage, no management training, and expected to get them up to speed.
This can be daunting. But good onboarding and followup processes can turn interns from a stressor for you to a productive, included part of the office. Here are six tips on how to do it best, based on conversations with staffers on what did and didn’t work.
1. Start with the Big Picture
Before you get into the nitty-gritty of the role, make sure interns understand the big picture. What are the ongoing projects and legislative priorities? What cool things has the representative, senator, or councillor done recently? Does the office have a mission statement or established team norms? What about intern expectations? What are we working towards?
Give them the building’s calendar for the next few months and a general org chart of your office. You know why you’re there and what’s happening (and may already be jaded about it) but they are coming in cold. The things that you take as a given are novel and exciting to them.
Make their first morning inspiring and energizing, rather than overwhelming!
2. Help Them Network Around Interests
During onboarding, introduce everyone in your legislative office. Have your coworkers say a bit about what they do, how they got there, and their career path. Do this early. Your intern will be much more comfortable once they’ve met the people around them, and that is ultimately better for everyone.
Be proactive in asking what they hope to get out of the role, and what policy areas excite them. If your intern is passionate about environmental issues and you know someone in the building concentrating on that, connect them for a 15-minute coffee. Remember that they’re there to get started in politics, and a single meeting can give them valuable guidance and contacts.
3. Give Meaningful Work
Try not to have interns at the desk all day. Interns are hoping to meet people, learn how the office runs, and see what life in the State House or City Hall is like. Find opportunities for them to shadow, whether you or the member. Have them sit in on meetings, not just hearings, and ask for their thoughts and notes.
Let them tackle first drafts as appropriate. This will let them do a deep dive on a variety of subjects, whether to brief internally or to respond to a constituent reaching out about legislation or issues. Show them the final version when you edit.
Even if 90% of their day is mundane, the 10% that isn’t will be what they remember.
4. Check Out Checklists
Provide a checklist of what the intern needs to do to be considered onboarded – this could be things like absorbing the big picture, watching any technical video trainings, reviewing social media guidelines, and reading recent news about the legislature.
It’s also best to break down their most common tasks into the relevant steps. Interns are overwhelmed their first day, and you can bet that most instructions will be forgotten.
A partial example for a daily media overview for a State Senator from Central Massachusetts might be:
Local news search checklist
Search on Google site:BostonGlobe.com Worcester
Look for anything in the last three days related to:
Governance
Economic news
Local personal interest story (high schooler completing a big service project, etc)
Repeat steps 1 and 2 for all other towns in our district
Repeat steps 1-3 for site:NYTimes.com, site:telegram.com, and all other local papers
Read Atul Gawande’s work for best practices. Or first do the task that you’re going to assign and write down everything that you had to do to complete it. Be meticulous: checklists give interns the security of knowing what they need to do, and save you from repeating the training later.
5. Weekly Check-Ins and Frequent Feedback
Weekly check-ins are invaluable, and can take place over video or in person. Ideally, you can have one-on-ones with each intern, as well as a quick group meeting. Ask interns to debrief what they’ve learned and accomplished that week, their challenges, and what they’re doing next. In both a group check-in and a one-on-one, recognize the work each person has done.
Use this time to keep updating them on the big picture and what’s going on in the building. This helps them stay connected to the office, the legislator, and the work. They probably aren’t on the text threads that you use to stay up to date, and could be missing out on information you think everyone knows.
A one-on-one is also space to provide feedback you can’t always email. People are complicated, interns are typically unpaid, and many are first learning about professional life. Assume best intentions - a one-on-one is a time to ask how they’re doing.
6. Create Community!
Whether in person or virtual, give interns time together. During onboarding, set aside time for interns to meet without managers present, and to meet any experienced interns. This can reduce work for you, help friendships form, and give them space to ask each other questions they might be hesitant to ask you, or that you’ve already answered.
Coordinate with other staffers in the building so that all interns can meet and don’t feel too siloed. Set up an intern Slack channel or communication hub where they can answer each other’s questions, share links, and get to know each other better. Good relationships mean a good experience!
How Legislata Helps
Legislata is productivity software for people in politics. Just as a well-onboarded intern makes your job easier, so too does a well-crafted technological solution to the information thrown at you every day. Get in touch for information on how Legislata can help your office run more thoughtfully and efficiently.