How to build an efficient team of interns?
May 22, 2024
by a searcher from Georgetown University - The McDonough School of Business in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Hello fellow searchers,
I was looking for ideas and/or recommendations on how to build and structure an efficient team of interns for a traditional searchfund.
- Ideal number of interns? - different backgrounds and work experience? - Is it better to have them working together or separate leads? - Etc…
I know the answers will vary from fund to fund, but I’d like to hear best practices and success stories with the reasoning behind them.
Thanks!
from University of Southern California in 1 World Way, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA
1) Make sure their roles are well documented before they start - if you need a starting point Jon Matzner on Twitter is awesome
2) Refer to rule 1
3) Set up a system to measure progress or output
4) like with any hiring - be tough on the hiring process so you dont churn through people; most of the time the problem is with the way in which you laid out the job, tools, etc why people are underperforming. If you haven't managed people before, that is also going to be a steep learning curve
5) Outside of set tasks, set some infinity tasks (whether that's market research, documenting their roles, etc). The worst thing you can have is people just sitting around waiting for you to tell them what to do.
6) Use a company to hire the assistants - dont be penny wise pound foolish - you want good people; you need to hire someone full time as it works out better
7) Start with upwork and managing someone on smaller projects and work your way up to a full time assistant
If you have more questions - happy to chat. Set up a few systems my self personally and professionally
in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
The life of an intern with you is small, and if they keep doing list building tasks and so, they won't be learning anything and interns are usually looking to learn new things, and to be honest, list building is not a great skill to learn and sell in market, and they would leave soon.
I come out as one of the practical solution for the exact thing that you are facing, which is providing support in your search journey for long-term, doing various tasks such as list building, LinkedIn outreach, doing email setup, and whatnot. We stick for long-time as the search journey is quite long, you won't find a business to acquire a business in just a month or two until or unless you are too lucky.
I also train the team internally, and we have worked with searchers already so there is little to no-time required from your end to train people and I can allocate more than 1 VA as well if required to speed up the process.
If you consider off-shoring it like other searchers are suggesting, happy to help you with that.
I can be found at redacted