Your Summer Interns - Tips on Managing Them, For Political Staffers

8/14/2019 Your Summer Interns - Tips on Managing Them, For Political Staffers

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TIPS FOR WORKING WELL WITH YOUR SUMMER INTERNS

Compiled by: Cincinnatus

Summer Interns! Depending on how organized you are as a political staffer, your interns

can either be (a) a great benefit to your minister’s office/Member of Parliament’s office

or (b) a source of constant headaches for you, as they wander around unsupervised andwith little real work to do.

In general, there are five good rules to keep in mind with your interns:

1. Give them meaningful work.

2. Respect their strengths and weaknesses.

3. Remember that there is a learning curve –have patience if the initial draft letters

they produce aren’t written well, etc.

4. Be a mentor.

5. Encourage your interns to ask questions – the more they understand about the

context of their work, the better.

And above all, keep this in mind: Interns are not just cheap labour. Your summer internsrepresent an opportunity to train the next generation of staffers/political operatives. And,

this being politics, they could even become your colleagues in a year or two.

(Granted, some of them already think they can do your job better than you can, but that is just part of being young, I suppose.)

Let’s get to some specific tips:

1. Assign interns tasks to which young people are naturally well-suited. For example, if an intern in a Member of Parliament’s Hill office could start up a Twitter account for theMP and teach the MP how to use it. Or the intern could create a Facebook fan page and

start to populate it with fans. Or design a new website in Wordpress.

If they’re not tech savvy, think about getting your interns to help with event planning or

logistics – a simple but important skill they may have picked up in high school through

their or university extracurricular activities.

2. Variety is the spice of life: If at all possible, cycle your interns through various roles in

your office. They may discover a new task that they are good at, or (gasp!) actually

enjoy.

3. Create incentives for your interns – for example, talk about your willingness to be a

reference for them when they begin searching for full-time jobs, and how this iscontingent on the quality of their work.

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4. If at all possible, avoid using interns for coffee runs or other menial tasks. When

individuals really have proven themselves to be ineffective, however, and you have no

other choice, you may ignore this tip.

5. If you can afford it, wine and dine interns a couple of times to show your gratitude for

their hard work. They will appreciate the gesture, especially since they are (a) most likely poor students and (b) most likely being paid peanuts.

7. Depending on the work you assign your interns, you may need to talk with your officemanager, chief of staff, etc., about setting aside some money, taxi chits, and other

resources into a formal intern expenses budget.

CAUTION: Be especially careful about the taxi chits. Some interns may use up chitswith alarming speed, so talk with your office manager regularly to see if you have to

impose strict controls. Ditto for photocopy cards, if, for example, you’re sending them to

a university library to do some research.

8. Take your interns to meet other MPs/MPPs/ministers/parliamentary secretaries/etc.

Deep down, interns enjoy being able to talk with friends back home about the important public figures they met in Ottawa. You could also reward great work by taking your

interns out for lunch with some of your caucus colleagues, for instance. It may be another

day at the office to you, but it will mean a lot to a 20-year-old student.

9. If you are working in a minister’s office, consider asking your communications

director or policy advisor to let the interns sit in on routine meetings with the department.

Your interns may find it interesting to observe how political staff work with civil servantsto advance the government’s agenda.

10. All government departments and agencies occasional host talks by academics, or holdsmall internal conferences or seminars. See if your interns can attend some of these

events, to learn more about the department’s operations, current issues, etc.

11. Make sure your interns get a well-rounded Ottawa political experience and give them

a ‘day off’ to go drop literature, door knock, canvass in your MP’s/minister’s riding, and

so on. If the riding is far from Ottawa (or Toronto, in the case of Queen’s Park) consider

donating some of your air miles to allow the intern to go meet the constituency officeteam and take part in a local corn roast, etc.

You may be surprised at how including them in these events can sometimes encourage anintern to feel included, and perhaps even return/stick around for the next summer.

12. Covering for vacationing full-timers: yes, this idea will ruffle some of your colleagues’ feathers. Fact is, with some gentle direction, an intern can make a fine office

receptionist for two weeks per year while your full time staff are on vacation. Simply set

some boundaries so as not to get yourself in trouble with the public or your full-time staff

- for instance, ‘no case work,’ ‘administrative calls only,’ etc.

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Oh – and remember to tell that intern-receptionist to take down the names and phone

numbers of any reporters who call, and email the information immediately to thecommunications director.

13. Research is a valid task for an intern – after all, students can write short memos andshort research papers in their sleep (or, rather, without any sleep). If you have a list of

ideas for private member’s bills, or just areas of interest that you’d like to explore, why

not ask your intern to research those ideas and give you a briefing? If the intern has afuture as a staffer or policy advisor, this will be great practice for him/her, too.

And if you’re working in a ministry such as Foreign Affairs or Defence that enjoys an

extensive in-house library, your intern may be able to explore that library and uncover awealth of material there for you to incorporate into speeches, news releases, etc.

14. Whenever possible, make your interns feel as if they are part of the team. While you

may have no choice but to ask them to leave the room while you discuss confidentialmatters, try to keep this to a minimum.

15. Keep the following idea in your back pocket for a day when you may have

temporarily run out of work for your interns – send them on a Question Period field trip.

16. Helping maintain lists (as part of election readiness) is an important rite of passagefor interns. Many an intern would likely prefer that this tip not appear at all, but the

reality is that databasing, data entry and list-keeping are important glimpses into the way

politics really works. All interns should work on such tasks for at least a few weeks.

When they have good phone lists when they volunteer for your next election (remember

to add THEIR name to your list as well), they will thank you for the clean, well-entereddata.

And, finally – here are some tips for any interns who read this document:

1. Treat all your work as an intern as if it was a final exam. Excellent work may lead to a

job offer at the end of your internship.

2. When you don’t understand something, ask! And when someone takes the time to

explain something to you, thank them. They will remember your graciousness.

3. Yes, it’s true – it is sometimes hard to summon enthusiasm for intern-type work. But

when the bell rings and your effort is needed, don’t blow off the task at hand.

4. Try to treat everyone in the office with kindness.

(Cincinnatus extends a warm and sincere ‘merci’ to all those wise anonymous sources

who contributed the useful tips presented above.)

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Your Summer Interns - Tips on Managing Them, For Political Staffers

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