Turning internships into virtual work experiences

County governments are finding ways to turn traditional internships into virtual work experiences this summer, making changes on the fly to cope with the constantly evolving coronavirus pandemic.

“Local government doesn’t stop,” said Joy Ruff, executive director of the Local Government Academy, based in Pittsburgh. “Interns are eager to provide benefits, to learn about communities. They are very interested” in working at this time. 

County governments need the benefits those interns provide, especially during the COVID-19 crisis, said Erin N. Stwora, deputy director, Physical Development Division, Dakota County, Minn. “Interns are an important part of our staffing scenario. We’re trying to maintain our workload.” 

Since the outbreak of the virus, U.S. employers have slowly begun moving internships online, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reported. Only 2.4 percent of employers polled by NACE at the end of March said they planned to conduct internship programs virtually. The preliminary results of NACE’s April Coronavirus Quick Poll released April 10 found that 36 percent of employers that are making changes to their internship programs are moving them to a virtual work environment. 

Twelve percent of the respondents said they were revoking their offers to summer 2020 interns and 22 percent said they were considering revoking their offers. 

The Local Government Academy was planning changes to its municipal intern program before the pandemic struck, looking for ways to expand development opportunities for students, Ruff said. But it hadn’t anticipated that it would have to cancel its Municipal Intern Fair for the first time in 25 years when universities closed due to the coronavirus. 

The fair was set for March 26, so the academy quickly shifted gears and began having students apply to the program directly on its website. 

“We worked with career services departments to let them know that the program was still on,” she said. “We got a good response. We’re going through the interview process. Some are conducting phone interviews, some are doing video. It’s moving forward.”

The traditional fair was a great way for people to meet each other and to interact, Ruff said, but the online fair also has had its advantages. “It really did streamline the process.” 

The Local Government Academy is funding 19 projects in southwestern Pennsylvania. Interns usually start working in early June and work 400 to 480 hours during the summer. “It’s a great opportunity for people who are involved in geographic information systems, urban planning, public policy,” she said. “Our projects are very diverse.”

The academy has been moving training and development online “just naturally across the board,” Ruff added. In addition to the internship program, the academy delivers educational workshops to local governments. “We’re looking at our online strategy. We’re figuring ways to do it on the fly.”

Dakota County, south of Minneapolis-St. Paul, currently has a part-time graduate student working as a land-use planning department intern and an International City/County Management Association (ICMA) fellow.

ICMA’s Local Government Management Fellowships are designed to attract recent graduates in Master of Public Administration, Master of Public Policy or a related program who can be placed in full-time, 12-months-long management-track local government positions around the country. 

“The current cohort is currently going forward,” said Rebecca DeSantis, ICMA assistant program manager, Career and Equity Advancement. “They usually finish between May and June. And the next cohort is still going forward. We’re still doing active recruiting. Our program is pretty flexible.”

Stwora praised the work of the county’s intern and ICMA fellow. “Without them, we would not be in a position to deliver some of our key planning tasks. They are playing an important role and getting incredible experience, real-world experience… I hope in their careers they don’t have to do this again.” 

The two join the approximately 80 percent of county employees who are now working remotely, according to Stwora. “We’re making teleworking arrangements. We’re using Zoom, Skype, videos. There’s a lot of ‘train the trainer.’ We’re taking advantage of everything to keep in contact with our staff.”

At first, it was hard for people not to see each other every day, so initially there was a virtual meeting each morning “to touch base. Now it’s two days a week. It’s working great,” she said.

One of the big pluses of virtual internships is that today’s intern is so comfortable communicating online, according to Chegg Internships. 

“Generation Y connects, learns and socializes via a computer or portable digital device; because of this, blogging, tweeting and Facebooking from their couch or favorite coffee shop simply feels familiar. Meanwhile, suiting up for corporate life in a traditional office setting may seem incompatible with their more mobile way of living,” the company said in a statement.

For employers that want to  continue to make the most of their intern programs — and their college recruiting efforts — the key to successful virtual internships is to transfer the benefits of the traditional approach to a remote format, according to NACE research. 

The aspects of the programs that are most important to students “are meetings with senior leadership, professional development and skills training and project presentation to management, all of which can be reworked for virtual implementation,” said Mary Scott, president of Scott Resource Group, who conducted the research for the association. 

Students are seeking “to strengthen their skills, to make bigger and better contributions to their assignments, and to validate the contributions they do make to management. These can all be replicated in the virtual workplace,” according to Scott. 

Good mentors are especially important for interns who are working virtually, she said.

“The mentor has to be somebody the intern can trust as a ‘safe zone.’ Take all of the uncertainty that we are going through and add an order of magnitude to it for students, many of whom are participating in their first full work experience. Mentors can provide guidance and will have a very important responsibility in making sure these remote internships are successful.”