🤪 Feeling the intern overwhelm?
You’re not alone! Executive Directors of nonprofits often face the daunting task of sorting through intern candidates, training them, and deciding what tasks they can handle—balancing between busywork and overwhelming challenges.
These young minds need ownership of their roles, even in a short timeframe, and directors must create guiding processes, mentoring opportunities, and special projects to help them thrive.
Sounds exhausting, right? Tune in to this episode because help is here! đź‘Ź
Join Rhea Wong as she sits down with Marti Fischer, the principal of Marti Fischer Group, a seasoned coach, and an author who specializes in helping young professionals transition from school to career.
📖Marti’s book, “Make Your Internship Count,” serves as a vital resource both for interns looking to maximize their learning and for employers striving to make the most out of internship programs. Dive deep into practical strategies, insightful anecdotes, and the must-do’s to shape an internship program that benefits everyone.
▶️Ready to turn your internship program from chaotic to cohesive? Press play and gain invaluable insights from Marti Fischer and Rhea Wong. Your next great intern experience starts here!
Important Links:
Get in touch with Marti: https://www.martifischergroup.com/
Buy her Book: https://go.rheawong.com/get-that-money-honey
Episode Transcript
RHEA 00:00
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Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown, I’m your host, Rhea Wong.
Hey, podcast listeners, Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown. Y’all it is internship season. So I have invited my friend and guest, Marti Fisher. She is a principal of Marti Fisher Group. She is a coach. She helps people and teams communicate better. She’s into career transition and she is on the pod today because she wrote a book about interns and how to get the most out of your internship.
So Marti, welcome back to the show.
MARTI 01:05
Thank you, Rhea. I have to say yours is my very favorite podcast. I love being the guest on your show.
RHEA 01:12
Thank you. That’s so sweet of you. Okay. Let’s just jump right into it because I know people aren’t thinking about the interns. It is summer. We’ve got.
Interns coming at the Ying Yang , you just wrote this book. Make Your Internship Count. And it’s about helping young.
MARTI 01:31
Hey, I even have one. Hold on. I should have proposed.
RHEA 01:33
Oh, I was like, you have an intern. There we go.
MARTI 01:35
Here we go.
RHEA 01:36
Should been there. Make your internship. There it is, folks there. Get it on Amazon.
All of the places.
MARTI 01:42
And if you want to do something good for the planet, get it on bookshop. org or at your local independent bookstore. That is my plug for independent bookstores. Yes.
RHEA 01:50
Yes. Yeah. By independent. So this is a book for the interns, for the students, not necessarily for the employer. So what inspired you to write this book?
MARTI 02:01
Yes. Actually it’s for both, but the primary audience. This is absolutely for these young people. Here’s what inspired me. I work with senior leaders every single day, but the fact is every single leader started somewhere and the single most difficult transition of any young person’s life is that transition from student to employee.
It’s a journey they do alone. It’s a journey that they do oftentimes without a lot of help and mentorship. And it’s the first real time. That a young person has had to ask a great number of adults and their network for help, and that can be difficult. So I thought if I write this book and really do a play by play of everything that’s entailed in either deciding to get an internship through the last day when you leverage it to get a full time job what you might encounter and to help demystify some of the aspects of the internship process.
RHEA 03:02
Yeah, that’s such a missed you point because when I was running my non profit, we had hundreds of college interns every year, every summer. And it was. Like having to program for the kids. The amount of time and thought and training that we had to put into it was really intense. And I think on the other hand, we had sort of admin interns that were thrown into the mix without a lot of support.
So I think the, these, the spectrum can be pretty wide. And when I think too, about kids coming from a certain, family that might be white collar professionals, they have some inherent, Knowledge that gets passed down that other kids may not have. So can you talk a little bit about. What are the things that young people should be thinking about as they embark on their internships?
MARTI 03:49
Yeah. I’m glad you brought up two things. First of all, that, what this book also does for employers is it helps to give them a resource that they can give to their interns to help answer some of the questions and deal with some of the scenarios that tend to come up in a working environment.
And so it takes a little bit of pressure off of the employer to help the intern take a little bit more agency in their own process. So it does serve that dual purpose. That’s number one. And then, you just mentioned the white collar young person who might come out with a lot of a lot of resources, a lot of networking.
Some don’t. But the purpose of this is to try to give that individual agency and autonomy in the process. What happens sometimes with people that young people with a lot of Networking connections and corporate and business connections is that oftentimes their parents say, oh, I have a friend.
You can just go intern for them. And that doesn’t really give that young person any agency in the career launch, which is such a pivotal part of your adult life. And so what I was endeavoring to do was recapture. That decision making process and conversely, for the young people that don’t have those kinds of connections inherently going into this kind of a 1st career launch pathing is that it gives them.
Some ideas number one about how to choose the right internship for you. What’s right? How do I even know? What the aggregate of my experience should point me toward so there’s a lot of work in that initial Decision making on how I should think about everything I’ve done and what excites me and how that Converts to a business environment and then helps the most pivotally because it’s just something that is so critical in helping all of these young people really learn how to network and network effectively and leverage those networks because that can be a real sticking point.
For a young person.
RHEA 06:01
I wouldn’t jump into networking because I feel like grownups, adults need help. Everybody needs help with networking. And, frankly, When I hear networking, I have a visceral reaction. I’m like, Oh, the pit in the bottom of your stomach. Yeah. I’m like, Oh, let’s talk about networking and how, not just young people, but everybody can think about how to network in a way that doesn’t feel icky because I’ve seen it done.
In my mind, networking, the experience I’ve had of networking is like being in this big cocktail party and talking to people and then having them look over my shoulder to see if there’s someone more important they could be talking to. It’s awful.
MARTI 06:35
It’s, it can be awful. Yeah. And there’s really nothing that strikes more fear.
There are two things that strikes fear in grownups and adults. It psyche is, Oh, you have to do public speaking. That’s number one. And number two, you have to go to a networking event. So in terms of networking, the thing that I always tell people is first of all, if you’re going to an event, so are other people.
So chances are the organizer has a list. Try to be strategic. The worst feeling is to walk into a room where you don’t know anyone and you don’t have a plan. So the tendency is to walk into a room, find one person, and stay with that person for way too long. But if you have a plan, I’d like to meet and talk to these three or four people, then you always have a an activity to think about next.
The other thing, and really most pivotally, because that’s tactical, most pivotally, networking is a two way street. And I think people a lot of times get hung up on, I’m asking. But the fact is, you should also Be learning, learning, and being curious. And if it becomes a conversation based on curiosity and a conversation based upon mutual help and mutual benefit, then that takes a lot of, to use your word, the ickiness.
and it makes it much more fun. Like you’re meeting someone at a party. Hey, let me learn a little about you. I’m going to tell you a little bit about me. Yeah, eventually I’m going to have an ask here, but first let’s establish some commonality. Let’s establish. Something that will help our relationship grow beyond this 2, 3, 5, 10 minutes at a networking event.
And that really helps to calm a lot of people down.
RHEA 08:27
Yeah, that’s so good. And I actually had a guest on the pod recently, Rebecca Ocamondo, who talked about how to introduce yourself in 20 words or less. Which I thought was really good because People can tend to go on, like they, what do you do?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like that teacher in Peanuts that’s wah, wah. I don’t, yeah, I don’t hear anything anymore. Okay. Let’s talk about interns. So I’m going to be a grumpy Gen Xer right now. I’ll be like, ah, these kids. They have helicopter parents and they don’t take the initiative.
So what are we seeing in these younger generations as they’re coming out of school that we should be aware of that may be generational differences?
MARTI 09:05
The number one thing that we’re seeing is a level of uncertainty and anxiety that’s really unprecedented. And that is something that. The tendency is always to say when I was coming up, we, even if we were anxious, we just put that aside.
That’s not the way this generation are reacting to the world. The world is an uncertain and confusing place right now. So what I would say to the. So the first thing you want to do when you meet young people is to make some decisions. Don’t let people make decisions for you.
Make some decisions about how you want to take this first step. May not necessarily be the right first step, but it will be a first step. You’ll learn a lot from it. And then you can A second set of decisions based upon that. So just that the act of ownership really serves to build confidence on the other side, your side, the grumpy Gen X side on the grumpy side, it’s ask more questions.
There are a lot of assumptions that Gen X millennials make. Even the boomers that are left in the workforce come to the conversations with alpha making and just making these assumptions and they aren’t necessarily the appropriate assumptions for this generation. So what I would suggest is to ask more questions about things in that young person’s life you Because they’re just coming out of school or still in school that really jazz them that really get them excited that will help you as an employer be able to match their skills and interest with the work you need to get done.
RHEA 10:56
What is coming up for me? I’m remembering many moons ago when I was first entering the workforce as a, an intern. And I think what was hard for me, and maybe I was just obtuse, was the transition from thinking of, Myself and my experience and then entering a space in which I was supposed to be thinking about the organization and the organization’s needs and where I fit into the bigger picture.
And so I’m wondering, how might you counsel young people making that transition? Because as a student, it is, you’re very, self focused, right? It’s my grades, my academic career and, whatever. Going from a me to a we, I think it can be a bit of a jump.
MARTI 11:48
It certainly can be a bit of a jump.
And that’s one of the reasons why I counsel young people and their employers, by the way, to in that discovery process, the discovery process about what you want to do and the direction you want to go. really helps you make those connections between organization and your interest as opposed to sometimes what could be considered a more traditional path, which is someone gives you a referral and you just go and try to get an internship there.
That, that happens all the time. Or you go to your career services office and they give you a list and they say, pick So there’s really no connection, but from the young person’s standpoint, it’s really looking at, okay, doing your research, looking at their website, looking at their social media, looking at the bios of the principles.
Where did they come from? What was their pathing like? What speaks to you? If nothing speaks to you and you’re just pursuing it because you feel like you should, you’re not going to have a good experience. You’re just not because there’s no psychic connection. And for working these days, and especially with alpha employees and the youngest Gen X employees, what they’re really looking for is purpose in the work, but that is a shared responsibility.
So on one side, the young person does a lot of exploration and really starts to connect with an organization, its mission, what it does, who it serves, products it makes, any of those things. So it is so that person can feel connected before they even start. Now, from the employer side, what I have found to be probably the single most important thing is having some sort of formal or informal mentoring.
Because there needs to be for this to be a good experience for the employer and for the intern, there needs to be a go to person. That young person can go to and ask ideas and have a goal for that internship, someone to help them track to a particular goal. So they finished that experience feeling like they are accomplished, feeling successful, being able to leverage that into the conversations about how to get a full time job.
And so that mentoring piece. Is the most pivotal piece because it serves as a one on one guide for that young person throughout the entire experience I don’t know if you had a mentor when you were an intern,
RHEA 14:17
uh, I can’t remember
MARTI 14:21
I didn’t I’m telling you I didn’t
RHEA 14:25
Yeah in different and different internships that were like varying degrees of mentorship right there certainly the Internships I had where it was like, here, go do this stuff, go away.
And then there were others that were a little bit more structured, but
MARTI 14:39
that’s why you need a goal that’s why I have a goal for an intern is so critical because even if it’s your example of go do these things and go away you can still start to have substantive conversations like, yes, I’m going to do that because that’s what you want me to do.
But is there an opportunity for me to plug into an experience that’s going to help me build, let’s go back to the, what we talked about before, public speaking skills or some sort of technical skill, but you have to make that ask. And in order to make that ask, you actually have to have a thought out goal for it.
So you don’t let the internship carry you through without having any control over the process.
RHEA 15:21
Yeah. And I think what you’ve flagged here, which I really want to underline for folks is that an internship should be thought of as a learning experience and that the intern really has to use your words to take ownership over it because nobody is going to be in charge of your own experience the way that you are going to be in charge of your own experience.
And I think expecting that other people are going to like, Think about your development as proactively as you are is probably not a realistic expectation.
MARTI 15:53
I would completely agree with that. And the ownership piece is what more than anything else is the thing that builds trust. Confidence.
It’s the thing that guides you when you’re making decisions.
It’s the thing that guides you when you’re problem solving, critical thinking. It’s the thing that guides you when somebody says, Hey, do you want to try this thing out? And so there are really 6 areas that employers look for. They look for teachability. They look for adaptability. They looked for problem solving.
They look for collaboration. They look for critical thinking. And they look for the ability to be flexible. So that’s what an employer is looking at when they’re looking at an intern. Are they exhibiting those kinds of leadership and adaptability and problem solving skills? Because that is not particularly teachable.
But if they exhibit that, I can plug that in and help them path. In this organization or in this company, but those are the six things that young people can really take ownership over and they can exhibit those qualities, which is going to set them up well, whether in that organization or another organization to be successful, because there really is nothing that organizations like better than homegrown talent.
You get to homegrow them, you get to plug into the values, you get to path them. You, it’s a really symbiotic, lovely, organic process, but you also have to come willing and open and able. To both speak up and learn,
RHEA 17:30
As you’re talking, Marty, the word that keeps coming to me is value, right? How, as an intern, are you adding value and how, as a employer, am I adding value to my intern’s experience?
And so I think the 1 thing that I really would underpinning this conversation is as an intern. Thinking about how are you adding value both to the company and to yourself, right? Because I think sometimes, and maybe I’ll just speak for myself sometime for myself, when I was an intern. I would get these lists of tasks and I would just do them the way that I thought about doing homework.
It’s okay, this is the thing I need to do versus thinking about it as like, how can I add the most value to the company and to my own learning experience?
MARTI 18:18
And this is, again, it’s such a great point. Yeah, it’s such a great point because value is at the base of everything. Why does an employer hire someone?
Because they’re going to bring something right? And this is really where that pre work before. That student even goes out to look for an internship so they can connect what jazzes them because what jazzes them and makes them excited and they feel like they want to explore and feel like they’re a little competent at, or it’s something even that they want to work on, but it’s something they love.
Those are the kinds of things that are going to spur the curiosity to take it beyond to your point, the task list of let me check the box, because thinking about it. A student, that’s what they do. They’re taught, they learn, they absorb, but then they’re putting it back out there on a test or a paper, but generally it’s a lot of checklist type of work.
Read this chapter, write this paper, take this quiz. And. This experience is one where you can actually take an opportunity, maybe for the first time to pause and ask the question, why and asking that question, why shows if you’re a young person signals to your employer, that you’re really interested in learning.
And if you can learn why these tasks connect to a larger mission or a larger objective, then in fact, you are able to add more value. Because you can connect your experience with what really is integral to the task rather than just checking the box and getting it done. And also from the employer’s side, being very clear about what is valuable to the employer.
The employer about an intern a lot of times, and you alluded to this before you’ve had some internships where it’s great, here you are. Here’s 50, 000 things to do. Bye. See you in 3 weeks. But if you’re an employer, and you really want to get the most you can out of an intern, and you’re thinking about the potential of.
Bringing that person on as a part time or full time employee at some point in the future, then taking an opportunity to be really clear about what constitutes a successful internship experience. And that gives young people who have come out of their entire life in academics. that have been very much benchmarked against the information that they have given, that they have been given.
It gives the young person a sense of comfort because they understand the construct. And if they’re told this is what a valuable and successful internship looks like, this is what you need to track toward. Great. Now you have a target. Everybody’s better with a target, right? Even the biggest entrepreneurs in the world are better when they have a target.
And that’s the same thing for an internship. So again, getting back to this highly shared experience between the employer and the employee. or hopefully employee, but in that point the intern. And when you think about it, one other thing to add here, all of this, all of this six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, that’s it.
It is a tiny amount of time, which is why I stress so much the pre work on the employer side and the pre work on the intern side, and then give A lot of strategies of how do you navigate this situation when it comes up? Like to your earlier point, how do you navigate, and this is actually in the book, how do you navigate when your boss or your supervisor just goes missing, just gives you a whole lot of work and disappears?
How do you navigate when they tell you the internship is one thing, and then you get there and it’s something else? How do you navigate that? So there are lots and lots of scenarios that are put forth that will just help people have a little bit of footing. If they do happen to them, that’s really helpful.
RHEA 22:24
So let’s talk about the employer side for a second, because I think I. I’ve had interns and it was always a challenge to right size the work that I was giving them, right? Because on the one hand, they’re very new in their career. There are certain things that you can’t necessarily delegate.
And so I’m wondering, how do you know what the right level of work is to give them? I don’t want to give them Busy work because that’s not helpful to anybody. But on the other hand, I can’t necessarily trust them with big strategic work So what’s the how do we delegate effectively? And how do we know what the right level of work is to give them?
MARTI 23:02
So that it’s a great question. That’s question. I get asked all the time So a couple of things in the interview ask scenario based questions You’ll get a really good sense for as an employer about someone’s capacity with a scenario based question that says something to the effect of talk to me a little bit about your workload in terms of your academics and how you.
the things in your free time. Or this is actually a really interesting question to ask when you were a freshman and they had the college, the career not career, but the clubs, the club fairs. So the tendency is you go in, you’re a freshman, you sign up for everything. And then you do.
Whatever you end up doing, but it’s definitely not everything. So that really, that kind of a question is, remember back when you were a freshman and you went to the club fair, tell me what you signed up for. Tell me how you managed it and tell me where you ended up because that’ll tell you a lot about how they make decisions.
It’ll also tell you a lot about timeline. How long did it take you to make those decisions? Did it take you the whole semester and you were stressed out and you were, or did, was it like, Nope, I’m not doing this. This isn’t. There’s no cost benefit to this one. I’m not going to do it. I’m just going to bow out gracefully early on.
So ask questions about problem solving, ask questions about critical thinking, ask questions about capacity in an interview. Those really help to understand how much that person can take on to your point about the strategic stuff. If you have more than one intern and many organizations do, if you have a strategic issue that you would like.
To maybe have them work on creating an intern project. That’s overseen by someone on the team. So giving them a challenge, an issue, and the reason why you’ve hired an intern is for new thinking, right? So see what they come back with some direction from one employee. And so what we’re doing is we’re actually overseeing this pool of interns.
It’s efficient from the employer side because you just have one person who’s doing the interface as opposed to lots of different supervisors. And it helps the interns be collaborative. It also helps them to learn how to manage interdepartmental or interdisciplinary conversations and collaboration.
RHEA 25:25
So let me ask this because this is coming up for me.
What about the concept of professionalism? On the one hand, as an intern, I think this is your first introduction to the professional working world. I also think what is considered professional is changing. What was considered professional when I came up is different than what it is today. I also think there, especially in the nonprofit field, a lot of conversation around, these norms and the extent to which they’re white supremacist and oppressive, et cetera.
So my question is. As an employer, what is my responsibility around teaching interns about quote unquote professionalism? And what is professionalism today?
MARTI 26:06
So what is professionalism today? Okay. Here’s the thing.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that a nonprofit of for profit, doesn’t matter who you are, any business. Out there is there to do one thing. They’re either there to sell a product, offer a service. If you’re a for profit to help your shareholders do well, if you’re a publicly traded company, not losing sight of why we’re here.
This is not the working world. It’s not democratic. There is a hierarchy, even in the flattest organizations, there’s a hierarchy because someone’s been there longer than you’ve been there. So they have experience, right? So not losing sight of for first from the employer side of explaining. Why we’re here, why we all come to work every day to do this thing, and we can’t lose sight of the thing in favor of what might be the urgent matter of the moment.
And there’s always going to be an urgent matter. And to that point from the employer side, also having policies in place. So the most recent one that comes up, of course, are the protests and how organizations and businesses dealt with employees who were protesting. Now, Google, for instance, There were 28 employees who were protesting on company time and they were fired.
Why? Because you’re there to do a job. If you want to protest Saturday, Sunday with a permit, fine. But here in this space, these are what our expectations are. So what I ask employers to do is you have norms inside your organization. Have a list of behavioral expectations. This goes back to having a value statement because at the core of it, that’s what a value statement is.
It’s an expectation of how we will treat each other, how we will treat our clients, how we will treat our family. There are stakeholders around us, and so taking that value statement, operationalizing it, and then drilling it down even further for interns into these are the types of expected behaviors simple as showing up on time.
Sometimes there’s a dress code depending on, what it is you’re doing. So making that clear. So someone who is coming in and interviewing, if you present this, if there are areas that are just not comfortable for that person, it may not be the best choice. But giving that person some choice early on, as opposed to getting into an organization and finding out like, wow, I do not like how this works.
It doesn’t sit with me at all, but being upfront and transparent in the beginning helps everyone make the right choice. So you end up with the best fit because again, You have between 6 and 12 weeks to have this internship experience. And if there are all these obstacles on professionalism going in, then that is going to just deter the whole purpose of the internship.
And also, when you’re onboarding your interns, really onboard them.
Don’t just say, hi, here you go. Here’s your stuff. Really onboard them. Go back over the expectations, go back over the behaviors, go back through. And actually I’ve done this with a lot of companies and a lot of nonprofits bring in a third party, doesn’t have to be me bringing a third party so they can answer the questions they can say how do I navigate this?
How do I navigate that? without the, I think fear is too strong a word, but without the feeling that, Oh, I’m going to be judged. So bringing in a third party to do an onboarding process is really helpful because you can just get all the questions answered. Most of them, not all of them in advance, which really does help level that playing field.
RHEA 30:01
So what I’m hearing is, Marty is, it’s important to do the pre work. It’s important to have a plan. It’s important to think about the onboarding before you get your internship, your interns on board. It’s important to have a process while they’re in, in the work. You’re thinking about things like having a goal, having a specific project, having mentor of some sort throughout the six, eight, 10 weeks.
What happens afterwards? What would you counsel both? Interns and employers to finish.
MARTI 30:34
So it’s such a good question and there’s actually an entire chapter on 1st impressions, last impressions, because last impressions are the 1st impression for the next thing. They are as critical as your 1st impression.
1st of all, from the intern side. Be aware of when your last day is, it seems ridiculous, you’re in the work, you’re doing the projects, you’re liking the people, you’re having a good time, whatever it is. And all of a sudden it’s like, Whoa, this is my last week. So be aware of when that is, because you’re going to want to, if you have a goal, you’re going to want to check in and just say like, where am I to this goal?
Talk with, if you have a mentor, hopefully you do. Talk with your mentor. Okay, how do I leverage all of this? Who are the people that I need to make sure I meet before I leave? So I can add them into my network and who are and thinking from the intern side Who are the people I need to thank your internship is probably going to be paid But a lot of people have helped you a lot of people have gone out of their way A lot of people have made time, had coffee, had a chat, done a zoom, whatever it is.
Who are those people I need to thank? Who are those people I need to connect with on LinkedIn? Who are those people that I need to stay in touch with? How do I ask for, if I had a great experience, How do I ask for a full time job or a part time job? How do I do that? And there’s a lot of language in the book and how and pathing on how to think about making that ask.
Don’t assume that the employer is going to come to you. They may not be able to hire you now. It might be a year from now. It might be two years from now. So what does that keeping in touch look like? What are the touch points? But all of that should be as planned as all of your pre work that you did in the beginning to make the right choice.
Because this is your inflection point. Why did you do this internship? You did it to Experience the world of work, and you did it to meet some fun people, and you did it to do some good work on behalf of an organization, but you also did it to get a job at some point, whether here or someplace else.
What do those steps look like to leverage that experience in order to make that next step? And what’s your narrative for that? What did you learn? What was your goal? What were your aha moments? Biggest surprises? Biggest disappointments? All of those things are going to roll up into your next interview.
So taking some time to really think about that. And from the employer side, as you asked about both, from the employer side, making space. For that to happen. So you spent time with the onboarding, do the same thing with offboarding. Yeah. And wrapping up that experience.
RHEA 33:23
And I would also say too, for any young people listening, one of the most valuable pieces of advice I got early on in my career is little notes.
So I had someone say, I have raised millions of dollars off the back of little notes, right? And I think it’s something that we don’t, especially in this email text heavy world, like we don’t actually take the time to write a little thank you note, but your mom was right. Write a thank you note. It goes a long way.
MARTI 33:46
Mom was right. I know. I know. It’s also in the book, right? A thank you note on a piece of paper or a card or a, go to the card store via card. Buy some stationery, do whatever. Talk about one little great experience that you shared or something you learned from that individual. Make it personal. It is the value of a handwritten note.
People are blown away. It’s almost like the value of a voicemail. Nobody gets voicemails anymore. That’s right. Something that sets you apart, that differentiates you from maybe some of the other individuals in your intern pool or some of the other employees. So it’s just something that will make you memorable after you’re gone.
I could not agree more about the note. Yay. Big fan. Big fan.
RHEA 34:33
And it’s funny cause I have had hundreds of interns over the course of my career. And it really bums me out when I have an intern that I feel like I’ve really poured a lot into, and then I never hear from them again.
And the interns who will pop up randomly, maybe a couple of months later, or even years later with a quick email Hey, I just wanted to let you know, this is how you impacted my life, or this is how you helped me, or this is something that you did that inspired me really makes a big impression. So I would say, don’t forget to Touch base along the way because these people can also be helpful in your career.
The world is a big place You never know when you’re going to bump into people again. So it’s really worth keeping those sort of warm connections warm.
MARTI 35:07
Absolutely, and people were really interested in you
if you’re not great if you’re a junior and you’re not graduating for another year send them a note midway through your senior year What are you doing?
What are you thinking about? Not even an ask, just a touch base. Just, Hey, I was thinking about you and just wanted to let you know where I am. And those professional networks. We talked about this in the beginning. You can never stop building a network. And it’s all about not only, it’s about being curious about that person, which is what fuels that ability to network really well.
And if you had a good experience with that person, it’s your responsibility, to some extent their responsibility, but just to keep the ball rolling and to keep. Keep in touch.
RHEA 36:05
And Marti, everything you’re saying, because I’m always thinking about fundraising. It’s also good fundraising.
Keep in touch. Tell people what you did.
MARTI 36:12
Get That Money, honey. Great book.
RHEA 36:13
Thank you, Marti. All right. So what’s the name of the book? Can you hold it up again so folks can get it? It is here. Make your internship count.
MARTI 36:21
A little bit of glare, but there it is. There it is. There it is.
RHEA 36:26
Yes. Buy it at your local independent bookstore and for all the employers listening and all of the, if you’re a young person listening or if you’re a parent of a young person listening or if you’re an employer, get this book.
The young people in your life will appreciate that.
MARTI 36:41
They will give them the autonomy and the agency that they need to do well to launch their career.
RHEA 36:48
Fantastic. Thank you so much, Marti. I think your book will help lots and lots of people make sense of this kind of weird experience of like internship.
Which can feel anything from babysitting to I am onboarding you possibly as an employee. So yeah, set expectations.
MARTI 37:08
Buy the book, give yourself the autonomy, give yourself the control over the process. Launch your career. Have a good time. You’re going to be working for a long time. Enjoy it.
Enjoy it. Hopefully this book will set you in the right path at the right time.
RHEA 37:22
Fantastic. We’ll make sure that all the information’s in the show notes for how to get in touch with you, Marti, and where to buy the book. So
MARTI 37:28
thanks so much. Thank you, Rhea. Always great seeing you.
RHEA 37:32
Always a pleasure.
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