Quick comment inspired by this post about StartupSchool.
Recently I’ve come to the conclusion that every single college student should be required to do internships as a condition of graduation.
I speak as someone who has hired recent graduates, mentored interns and perhaps most importantly flailed around for five years after college trying to figure out what the hell I was doing.
Most engineering schools already require this via a co-op program. But I think that every major — poli sci, gender studies, even fine arts — should offer a yearlong internship program that allows the student to spend time working in business, non-profit and government to figure out where they fit in. And they should come away from it with these measurable skills:
- How to run a meeting
- How to create and present a slide show
- How to persuade
- How to understand the incentives and economics that drive organizational decisions
- How to say “no”
- How to write a short, actionable email
- How to read a simple p&l statement and balance sheet
- How to have a difficult conversation with a co-worker or boss
- How to manage your to-do list (I’m partial to the Getting Things Done approach but there are other methods that may click better with different personality types)
These are all things I happen to be quite good at, but it took me years of floundering around to develop them. And I didn’t learn a single one of them during my crazily overpriced, elite-private-school education.
There may be other skills I haven’t thought of and perhaps even suck at. Please add your own in the comments.
(Now that I think about it, self awareness is a critical skill for every employee as well, but it’s hard to measure without going to therapy. Maybe in a mock interview where you ask people to describe their weaknesses?)