Development

10 Essential Experiences for Interns

Two industry experts suggest 10 experiences that make for a well-rounded internship program.

Our June CMP Series article looked at how internships can create value not only for interns and your company or organization.  Here are 10 on-the-job experiences recommended by the planners and professors we spoke to for the story.

1. THE 36,000-FOOT VIEW
Liz King focuses on giving her interns wide exposure to the meetings industry as a whole. “Make sure that they have experience with different types of events,” she said, “and different stages of the event-planning process.”

2. A TYPICAL DAY ON THE JOB
Peggy Marilley makes sure that interns get on-site experience. “Maybe we stand at the table and we count all the chairs,” she said. “We count all the plates. We count all the glasses and I explain why, so then they pick that up and then they finish the task.”

3. WORKING WITH STAKEHOLDERS
“They need to be able to work with both internal and external stakeholders in order to ensure a successful event,” said Godwin-Charles A. Ogbeide, Ph.D. “The sponsors can make or break your event.”

4. THE EVENT LIFE CYCLE
“Ideally, the internship involves starting at the very beginning of a meeting or an event,” Marilley said, “and participating in the process all the way up to writing thank-you notes to vendors and clients, to making sure that everything’s in order for the final invoice.”

5. THE ART OF THE DEAL
Ogbeide sees negotiation experience as essential. “They have to be able to manage a contract,” he said, “depending on the kind of meeting they’re having.”

6. RISK MANAGEMENT
Ogbeide wants his students to learn to mitigate risk as it applies to meetings and events. “The day of an event they need risk-management skills,” he said. “How do you identify a risk?”

7. GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
“I really like to push them in regards to timing,” King said. “We know that we all work evenings and weekends, and obviously when we’re paying them by the hour we’re committed to them working a certain number of hours. But we try to push them a little bit past those hours, just to see how they handle working in a very fast-paced industry like ours. Obviously they’re not working until midnight, but we might push their hours at the last second, because we need to see how they handle that.”

8. NETWORKING
King makes sure her interns have many opportunities to perfect their networking skills. “We really spend some time helping them figure out how best to network, how to follow up with people,” she said, “and how to create meaningful relationships with people.”

9. BUDGETING
“You need to have some financial-management skills,” Ogbeide said. “Asking, for example, what are we going to charge for a registration fee if we’re going to charge people for this event?” Students should also learn about the details of managing event funds. “What about control of the money we’re collecting?” Ogbeide said. “Where is it going to be deposited? Who’s in charge of it?”

10. EVENT MARKETING
Ogbeide also wants his students to understand the essentials of reaching out to attendees and potential attendees. “How do you market this event?” he said. “Who is going to come? Who is your target market? How are you going to reach them? How are you going to manage your communication channels? How many communication channels are you going to use to reach your different market sets?”

Kate Mulcrone

Kate Mulcrone is digital editor of Convene.