End of Summer Slumps: 3 Steps to Offboarding Your Interns
August 14, 2013
At the beginning of the summer I wrote a post around the best practices for managing your summer intern. Hopefully your interns have provided great value to your team over the last few months, but now — just like summer — all good things must come to an end.
How to Say Goodbye to Your Interns with the Proper Offboarding Process
With summer winding down, students are probably starting to think about leaving you and returning to school (unless, of course, they are staying on for the fall, as well). Properly offboarding your intern will not only prevent work from falling through the cracks, it will also give your intern a lasting impression of their time with your company that they (and you) can put to good use.
Here are few steps you should take when offboarding your interns:
1) Confirm Your Intern’s Last Day and Notify All Team Members
Make sure everyone is aware of the intern’s last day and that you allocate time to transition any unfinished work to another team member.
2) Complete Evaluations and Hold an Exit Interview
Both the intern and their mentor should complete evaluations of some sort to help assess the intern’s growth and skills as well as the internship program, overall. Once complete, you should hold an exit interview to review the evaluations and discuss the intern’s time with the company.
Assess whether or not he or she would come back next summer, or recommend your company to a peer. Be sure to also give constructive feedback on how he or she did and what could be improved upon.
3) Consider Utilizing Former Interns as Brand Ambassadors
If the intern has positive things to say about the internship and confirms he or she would recommend your company to a peer, then why not utilize him or her as a brand ambassador at school. After all, what better place to have someone promoting your internship program and company to students than at the school they attend?
Other things to think about:
- Would you write your interns a letter of recommendation? Let them know!
- Would you like to offer them full-time employment upon graduation?
- Are they receiving credit for the internship? Do they need any sign off?
- Would you like to organize a send off party/dinner?
Whether your intern were phenomenal or just okay, make sure they leave the company on a good note and feeling like they accomplished something over the summer. Make sure to stay in touch with them and encourage them to reach out if they need anything in the future.