Intern Brainstorm & Summer 2022

Summer 2022

In-person, remote, hybrid? 

  • Primarily in-person - allow them to follow their manager's 3 days in/2 remote schedule
    • Make sure we include vaccination requirement on website and PDs
    • Check with HR on how that will be tracked
  • Consider fully remote if
    • a) manager amenable/project allows for it (with strong preference for managers with prior experience managing interns) and
    • b) no solid in-person candidates or best candidate has legitimate reason to be fully remote

Summer Call 

  • Right now looking at putting out call for projects and call for intern projects at the same time. Offers some synergies, might just be confusing...
    • Allows us to push the "too big" intern projects to actual research projects and push too vague research ideas to start as an intern project.
  • NEED to do the press release - make the case to PIO now
  • Continued emphasis on clarity of descriptions - these need to be self-explanatory (do not assume people know what and how DDOT does its work - context matters for recruiting good candidates)
    • HU: find a couple really solid examples

Brainstorm

Tracking intern work

  • Progress reports - need to get those active again. 
    • Need to add back the manager signature feature back in - a self-certification feature where the intern states that they got their manager concurrence
    • Set up a reminder in the Intern "Team" - deadline is 3rd of each month
    • Use HU's Cognito Forms for collection
      • HU will send DDOT a summary of reports (Excel) every month by the 10th
    • Structure: 
      • Date/Name/Email/Intern level
      • Will you continue next month?
      • DDOT supervisor
      • Are you following a documented work program? (Y/N)
      • What did you work on this month? Please highlight any tasks completed and accomplishments.
      • Did any collaborations between Divisions take place with the past month? (Y/N)
      • Have you encountered any challenges while conducting your tasks? If so, please describe them. If you need further assistance please contact us!
      • What are the tasks you expect to undertake next month?
      • Please certify that your supervisor has reviewed this progress report before submission (check box)
  • Work Plans
    • continue to do this - actually collect up before starting
  • Exit survey
    • Talk about skills learned
    • Katie will track down what she started on this
    • we need to actually create and implement exit procedures - baseline draft up as an exit email

Recruitment

  • Pushing for greater diversity - do we put greater emphasis on more female and minority candidates? We generally do better on the latter than former. 
    • Stephanie & Katie to talk to Ramono/ASD
  • Greater push for undergraduate internships - we need more slots
  • GIS and similar skills (e.g. python) - how to handle
    • can we identify what is needed and find some recommended trainings
    • figure out what projects actually need GIS day 1 and which can learn on the job and apply during second half of internship
    • can we assess what to actually classify as basic - intermediate - advanced to help HU with their interviewing