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What are good tasks to assign to an intern/trainee? (wfh)
Hey there!
I’ll be working with an intern/trainee for the next 3 months. He is 17 years old and wants to learn about marketing. Since I’m the Social Media Manager my supervisor wants me to take care of our intern most of the time, but I’m not sure which tasks are a good choice for a teenager. Another problem is that we’re a remote company, so he won’t be able to sit next to me and watch my while I’m doing my work. I will be around and able to ask his questions / schedule calls, though.I do have a few ideas so far, but I’d appreciate your input!
* Explaining how Instagram Hashtags work and asking him to research them for different types of content
* Researching (Content for website, Tweets we can share etc)
* Collecting specific posts from bad actors and asking him how he’d answer them + explain how to handle things like that
* Researching competitors and collecting ideas for our social media channels
* Showing him how I schedule posts
* Researching Tiktok / Byte and checking if it makes sense to create a company account / check which kind of content can work (he has 20k tiktok followers).
* Researching blog topicsI was also thinking of asking him to learn about the company during the first day. What we’re selling, how the products work and who our customers are. This way it might be easier for him to research, but I have no clue if that’s enough to fill a 8 hour day/week. Maybe it makes sense to assign him a specific project every week, doing his own research and building something? I’ve trained a lot of co-workers in the last years, but I’ve never worked with a intern/trainee around this age, so I’m worried I’m asking too much.
Personally I manage Instagram, FB, Twitter, YouTube for 3 product lines and I’m in charge of our newsletters and content for our blog (which will be written by a writer). So that’s the area I can show him. Any ideas are much appreciated!
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6 Replies
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You could teach him how you write copy and fit it to the platform you’re using and give him the opportunity down the line to write his own for the company once he understands the brand’s voice.
He could also help you with marketing strategy and how to set up a marketing plan based on the needs of the company to teach him about budget and spending and where to put more money behind ads and where to hold off a little more.
If you have this intern for 3 months, he should be able to work seamlessly with you by the end on posts and ad work having control of what goes out with the ability to fix it if it’s not to your liking. That will give him a basic idea of marketing and how it works while also giving him experience beyond research.
Who knows? Maybe he’ll even teach you a few things about how to connect with Gen Z on a marketing level! Ask him what he would interact and engage with and what he would scroll past. He might be 17 now, but he and his peers are the future of consumption.
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How well does a social media manager get payed? Also what type of company do you work for?
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We teach our interns to write blog posts and make them responsible to answer any and all customer questions. We have a manual for them to refer to and guide them more closely at the start of their internship. We also encourage them to have a project of their own.
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I was in charge of an intern for a summer at my office. It was great. She stepped up to the plate and always went the extra mile. Interns take advantage of the opportunity to learn and grow from you and your workplace – take advantage of this opportunity to learn about your workflow and be open to their opinions about best practices.
I learned so much from my intern about front-end web design as my schooling on the subject was 10 years old and hers was current.
You’re on the right track with filling time and clearing your own schedule. Also sit with the intern and explore your socials and website with them, see what their UX is like.
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Teach him about customer avatars, perhaps show him examples or let him research your target audience. Show him how you write copy, whether that’s for social media, blog posts, emails etc. Also if you use apps like google docs you can work with him and see what he comes up with in real time. This may help with brainstorming ideas amongst other things.
Everything else you suggested is great. -
You should teach him how to think so that he can start developing some autonomy and how to critical analyze and pivot if situations change
So many people just know 1+1 = 2 but as soon as it’s -2+4, they might get lost (just a simple analogy)
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