Some companies may hesitate to bring on an intern. The marketing team here at Incentive Solutions definitely did. There’s a lot of uncertainty and risk involved. Is it really worth it to spend our time and resources training someone who may not be a good fit for our organization or team? Are we just going to lose productivity giving a newbie free experience while our workload stacks up? While doing all of this our work motivation plummets? Well, at least we can always send them for coffee, right?

In our case, these misgivings couldn’t have been more wrong! We decided to accept University of Richmond junior Kaitlin Trainer as a marketing intern from June to July. We weren’t sure what to expect at first. She fit in like family, making our team happier, more motivated and just a tad more sane!

Will There Ever Be a Perfect Time to Bring on an Intern

Kaitlin jumped in head-first at a very hectic time. We had just switched to a new marketing platform, Marketo, were interviewing new graphic designers, scrambling to add finishing touches to the last of the year’s content—and oh yeah, btw, we were revamping the entire Incentive Solutions website! We were pulling some late nights to get everything done and sometimes getting lost or just downright drowning in the workload. Even the best marketing teams get a little frazzled and lose work motivation when trying to do so many things at once.

Just Jump In

We were lucky enough to have Kaitlin there to save the day. We were hesitant to give her major tasks at first, but she excelled at everything we threw her way with a go-getter attitude that turned out to be contagious. She took on the smaller but still important tasks that were looming and piling up behind us, like researching and creating our hunt list, fleshing out new buyer personas, cleaning up coding in preparation for our database transfer. She even participated in designer interviews and gave us great feedback. Our motto for the two months Kaitlin was here was “Whoa, Kaitlin finished that already!? Can we hire her?”

Cue us crying tears of happiness when we realized, oh, that massive prospect list we just created? Kaitlin knocked it out already. Those infographics we were struggling to pull together before the end of Q3? Kaitlin already did them, and they’re fabulous.

Change the Atmosphere

It’s amazing how much it changes your team spirit and supercharges your work motivation to have someone on board who’s eager to learn, catches on quickly, and attacks the workload with determination and enthusiasm. So, for those of you who may doubt whether bringing on an intern is worth it, do yourselves a favor and take the chance!