Intern Invasion

Summer is here in the Philippines and time for companies to cut cost for the second quarter. The solution: getting interns instead of project assistants.

I saw twelve college juniors waiting at the lobby of the office waiting for something to do. As a junior in the company myself, I assumed that they would be given to my boss.

I got the shock of my life when the HR gave me two girls to handle; a responsibility which I gladly accepted. I had a rough idea of what to do with them and it had something to do with a mock presentation. I somehow felt that I had to share whatever I had learned in the past year. My partner (another company youngster) and I had three girls making an event concept, budget, and finally a presentation.

Seeing them work and present made me appreciate the education and training that I had. Like any novice business presenter, they were fidgety and kept on speaking to their slides. Feed reader subscriptions to Presentation Zen, AdAge, the marketing god, and Futurelab paid off.

Gave the interns advise about business presentations and concept writing. I also learned a lot about project management from my partner since I do the “creative” stuff and she does the budgeting and making the project come to life. So the past few days have been hectic yet loaded with information for the interns.

The whole shebang got me excited about that master’s degree I’m getting in a year’s time.