Horticultural Internships.
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| Floral Dinner OFA 2005 |
I am in the midst of looking for another intern for the spring and
summer. Hopefully budgets and
candidates coalesce to bring me someone that meets my needs and I meet
theirs. This got me thinking about
the whole point of internships in the first place. There are many benefits for both the students and the companies
hosting them that I thought I would share some of my thoughts.
While this probably applies to internships in general, I only have
experience in horticulture, so there you go.
Internships are an
important part of your career development. Many programs require some sort
of internship experience for completion of a degree. If you have the opportunity to do multiple
internships I recommend it. The idea for
most getting a degree in horticulture is that you intend work in horticulture,
so make a point to get as much experience as you can. While one of the more difficult decisions,
what do you want to do with your life?
-An internship is a great
way to learn what you don’t want to do-
This may sound a bit weak
as a reason, but how can you tell what a career path is really like with out
experiencing at some level. There were many paths in horticulture that I
have looked at longingly, but most of the time I focused on the highlights and wasn't aware of some of the realities of that field. Learning those realities and my aversion to
them were some of the more important lessons.
They say there is more to learn from a failure than a success.
I am not saying that you
won’t learn other valuable lessons, not at all, but deciding what you want to
do with your life is tough, and you may not figure that out for a long, long
time; but if you can pick up on the parts of a particular job you do and don’t
like you can come closer to finding that career that maximizes the good stuff
and hopefully makes the boring or annoying stuff more tolerable.
-An internship allows you
to apply classroom lessons-
Learning
something in a classroom is important.
The theories and applied lessons are very valuable, but putting them to
work outside the classroom will reinforce that exponentially. Class experiences are done in an isolated
environment. When you learn to take
cuttings of a plant, you do a few, talk about how and when to propagate other
types of plants move on to the next chapter.
When you need to take 5,000 geranium cuttings today because 60% will
take and sales pre-booked 3000 for 16 weeks out it takes on a whole new
meaning.
-An internship is an opportunity to learn how a
company functions-
Every
company is does things differently. When
you intern at a given organization you will pick up on the company culture, the
procedures for how to do certain tasks and the strategy that company uses to
succeed. They have figured out what
works for them and being human are reluctant to change things if they are
working. If you pay enough attention and
ask plenty of questions you will pick up on the rational for their approach. When you go into the work force you can use
that knowledge to contribute to your new company.
Many of
the successful companies around today are that way because they are open to
some level of change and may be receptive to your experiences. While it can be a tricky balancing act to
institute change in an organization, your experiences of what can work in
different situations can make you a very valuable employee.
-An internship is the best venue for asking
questions-
Guess
what? I love to talk about my job, ask
anybody. I may be a bit of an outlier,
but when an intern, mine or anybody else’s comes to me, the flood gates open
wide and I will go on and on. I want to
teach you, to get you to understand what I do, why it is important and how to
do it right. I am not alone here, can
you think of a better ego boost? Think
about it what other time do you have an opportunity to meet with a company
founder/president/upper management who have years of experience to bestow and
can ask: “how did you do it?” If I
regret one thing is that when I was an intern I wasn't more aggressive in my
own education. Don’t be the one who
waits to be told what to do and what to learn.
Ask to meet with everyone, ask to job shadow the salesman, or the
mechanic, or the irrigation crew. There
is so much to learn, and people are willing to bestow their wisdom on interns.
-Internships are good for networking-
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| 2005 Ball interns |
I often talk to managers who are cynical of youth with all that texting, emailing and twittering, they say personal relationships are not valued.
Personal relationships will never stop being important, its just
interactions have become more diversified.
Not wanting to dwell on that today, what I can say is like it or not you
have to network. An internship allows
you to get to know people and knowing people can make all the difference if
only by association. At a job interview
if you know someone in common, and they think highly of them, that’s a
bonus. No matter what you do in the future,
you are not doing it in a vacuum, trust me I have tried. So learn how to talk to people and get to
know them at some level and you will find that it can pay off in the long term.
Employers:
There are a lot of good
companies out there doing internship programs, but there are some who are not
who should be. Internships are not one sided, no company runs a program for
purely philanthropic reasons. The
benefits for the company are many, but some of them are not so tangible.
As with anything you do in business, you should set objectives for
the intern. What do you want out of
it? Are you looking for future
supervisors and managers, maybe someone who will become a customer? Or are you looking to complete a specific
project or focus some resources in a particular area.
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| Specialized cut flower research |
There are two basic types of interns. General and specialized. A general intern will be moved from area to
area, much like a management trainee to get an experience of many aspects of
the business. Specialized interns on the
other hand work in one area. A marketing
intern for instance comes in for the purpose of supporting and working with the
marketing department or a production intern brought in to work on a specific
project.
-An internship is a way to
tryout a potential hire-
You want to find
a qualified candidate from a horticulture program, and you want to vet them a
bit, well an internship is designed with an end date. Be it three months or six it is understood
that the intern will be leaving and either going back to school or going on to
do something else. That is of course
unless you find a place for them. You
have the freedom to try them out at different jobs and different areas of the
company, test out their skills and determine if they are someone who would fit
your organization in the long term.
-Interns can be more
motivated and better trained-
Interns are hired
from an applicant pool that can be generally described as highly motivated and
can have previous training in the job. I
believe that you can get a work that far exceeds the level of compensation
being provided. They are there to learn
and to impress, you might even compare it to a 3 month interview. Obviously there are some tasks they will complete
that are more efficiently done by regular staff, you are not looking at them to
become laborers; you are training and molding future supervisors and managers.
-Interns can come with
Desirable skill for a project-
Say you want to higher a
marketing intern that can help with the website. Well look for interns that have those
skills. You can monitor and approve
their work, but they may be very capable in working on that project. Or you find one that has taken a specific
class or had an experience that will help to better your company. This will depend on the type of internship
you are looking to create, but regardless the classroom knowledge is fresh and
they are connected directly to the school they came from if that is deemed
valuable.
-Interns can be good PR machines-
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| Circle of Life Program, I am still a PR machine |
Sometimes interns
impress you enough that you hire them and they become apart of your team. Other times they go off and they may become
part of your customer base. Even if they
go work for a competitor or end up in another part of the country, they take your story with them. They will influence
those around them. A fellow student may
ask how the internship went, and assuming you provide a positive experience, your
intern will dish out positive PR for you.
Students will go through school knowing about your company, and that can
mean more qualified applicants, better reputation to a professional customer
base, and a better overall perception of your company. This is a long term payoff, but you plan on
being in business for the long term right?
In closing, Employees: Internships
are not cheap labor; you need to put some effort into making it a valuable experience
for both you and the intern. Students: If
you have the opportunity to be an intern, don’t coast through it, you can’t
reap what you don’t sow, so be an aggressive advocate for your own success.
At that I leave to
ponder the future of my own internship program and hopefully it will pay off in
the long run. I mean what’s a better
experience than working for me?
Always at your service
Your Horticulturist.
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