An Intern’s POV: Frustrating Things About My Job – part one

FACT: In order to keep your team motivated and productive, it is essential to look after all employees, especially your interns.

When one person starts to feel frustrated about their job, it ripples out to every single person on the team, unless it’s addressed immediately by their supervisor.  And in the middle of busy wedding season, that’s the LAST thing you need to deal with. #amIright

So, what if you could take a peek behind the curtain and see what millennial interns REALLY mean when they’re frustrated with their job?  Get to the core of WHY they sometimes flake out, give up and/or don’t really flourish on your team.

Well, today is your lucky day.

Back in April 2015, we did some extensive research to find out what millennials really thought of their past internships in the wedding industry and what they found most frustrating.  Some of it is a bit SHOCKING.

It’s time to share with you what we found out, so you can avoid these mistakes at your firm…

Sometimes when work is busy, it’s hard to always delegate tasks to your interns – we get that.

But they will never be able to learn and help you, if you don’t let them get involved.

In fact, “not being allowed to have hands-on experience” was seen as the top trait which makes a bad mentor.

A common theme stated by interns was that rather than being utilized, they were “molded into the role of an administrative assistant”, (aka. paper pusher and coffee fetcher).  This was despite “them showing initiative” and “asking for further projects.”

This forms a classic cycle that occurs with many busy wedding planners, finding that they are too busy to train their interns, but the reason that they are too busy is because their interns aren’t trained to help!

Unless you take the time to teach and develop them, your intern will not gain the necessary professional skills they crave and you are missing out on the opportunity to truly multiply your firm’s efforts.

This lack of delegating tasks was reflected by some interns who stated that “there was never enough to do.” Not delegating real tasks meant that not only were they not learning new skills, but the number of tasks that they were trusted with was so limited, the interns became bored.

BUT… it doesn’t have to be this way!

First, follow our EMPOWER THEM blog series where we share one new idea weekly of a great task you can delegate to your apprentices, in order to give them real-world experience at being a wedding planner and allow them to gain new skills.

Second, apply for The Apprentice Program.

Our 6-week onboarding training program gives you the foundation of online training so you can become a better mentor and train your interns on the critical topics of wedding planning and how your firm plans events.  This eLearning platform provides weekly video sessions that spark better learning discussions between you and your interns, carefully planned homework assignments, weekly report cards for feedback and more.

The Apprentice Program provides structure to your team training…

…so you have more time to focus on sales and client relations. And your interns get what they need as well:

“WOW! I never realized how much planning goes into a wedding.  I like the homework assignments because they challenge me to use the information I learned in the videos and with my mentor. The Apprentice Program is great, I love it!” ~Shirin F, Apprentice at 11:11 events – Austin, Texas

Apply today to receive this exclusive training for only $75/intern!

Let’s do this.