It’s an odd week here at TrojanOne.
We’ve had a thrillingly busy summer, with what has seemed like an endless season of live activations potently mixed with 2015 program planning. The hint of a brief calm pervades the office, but only a hint as there are RFPs to be finished and major Labour Day weekend events to be executed. This fleeting moment before the back to school storm is magnified by the absence of most of our summer interns, who have already decamped for their next wave of education.
Our intern program is a source of pride for me.
In this day and age the concept of interns is being globally and rightfully vilified for corporate abuse. The word itself has become a metaphor for overworked, bullied, ignored, abused, coffee-fetching, filer, underpaid, poorly trained, a managerial nuisance, and free labour. I think several years ago our program may have been guilty of some of those sins. In fact I can remember when full-time staff complained that having an intern was too much “work.”
No longer!
Today we have a sophisticated recruitment, selection, on-boarding, training, and supervisory system for our interns. We fully expect them to contribute to our success and they fully expect we will contribute to their success. It works.
But I would be foolish to suggest it’s all about our system. What the system has really done is allowed us to attract the best and the brightest. But these young people have talent beyond their years and we are merely fortunate they chose us. Today was a celebration of our summer intern crops. Announcements were made surrounding our hiring on of a few young talents. As excited as they are to be earning full-time pay, I am equally thrilled about the value our internships provide us in finding amazing entry level talent. To cap our celebration we presented the Matt Ludlow Spirit Award. It’s a special internal recognition to the intern who best represents Matt’s spirit, one of our former interns who died much too youngly three years ago.
This term’s winner represents all that is amazing about internships done well. In fact, he is so great I am not sharing his name because I want to keep him. Problem is he is only 19 and so I have to wait a few years.
Yes that was no typo. This kid is nineteen years of age. But he is already a legend in our shop.
I first took notice when he presented some background work he had done for an RFP. Not only was the work thought-provoking, insightful, and comprehensive; but staff members in attendance were in awe with his presentation.
In the span of a few months this youngster, who I don’t think shaved once during his tenure, went to client meetings, wrote pitches, led concept brainstorms, dealt with senior purchasing people at our clients, and never once lost his smile. To say that I trusted him like a five year vet was an understatement.
Maybe I’m biased because he gave me such a nice “Thank-You” card before he departed, but my experience with this youngster dispels all the myths that young people today don’t get it. This kid got it, as did our entire crop of interns this summer.
Our team feels fortunate to have had them. Hope they feel the same about us.