Are interns worth the time?

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November 12, 2020

by a searcher from Harvard University - Harvard Business School in Dallas, TX, USA

This might seem like a counter-intuitive question but I'm wondering what people's experiences have been working with interns. I'm particularly wondering about the time invested in training them vs what you actually get out of them (since it will probably only be for the summer). Would also be curious if people have had good results using a freelance worker to do scraping, grunt work, etc. Thanks!

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Reply by a searcher
from The University of Chicago in Chicago, IL, USA
Personally, I've gotten a lot of value out of my two intern classes (so far). The email personalization work alone would take me ~40 hours/week to do comparable volume without interns, leaving no time for owner calls, diligence, industry research, investor reporting, etc. I estimate I spend ~6-8 hours/week meeting with interns, answering questions, checking work, interviewing candidates, so call it a 5-7x return on invested time. I do still leverage freelancers/web scrapers for grunt work, freeing up the interns to do more value-added tasks.

Aside from that, there are a few non-tangible benefits to having interns. Searching without a partner is lonely, and it helps tremendously to have people alongside you to share the ups and downs. I also think that teaching the PE process and forcing yourself to write out playbooks/guides for interns will help hone your approach and focus. Finally, building an intern program has been tremendous practice with many of the key activities you'll face as an operator: recruiting candidates, evaluating talent, motivating people, coaching, conducting performance reviews, recognizing success, employee onboarding/offboarding, etc.

It's definitely possible to find a deal without interns, but I think the pros far outweigh the cons. Check out Jim Sharpe's blog and the Endurance/NIP internship program guide linked elsewhere on this site. There are really good resources about how to get value from interns.
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Reply by a searcher
in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
I would say there are positives and negatives to everything. There could be time that you have frustrating experience with an intern, and there could be time that you get an intern who has the right attitude and his/her thought process aligns with yours and then it is no less than blessing.

Intern would be catching up on your thing quickly and it wont be long when you would be hiring them full time.

Same goes with the freelancers as well. You can bump into the wrong one and can be miserable and you can hire expert freelancers based on their past records and your life would be easy.

I have personally built long term relationships with my clients and working on a lot of different things where we started working together with just one little project.
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