Into the Woods We Go

In August our new start up, Myndsparc, took residence at the Thunderbird Global Entrepreneurship Incubator on the campus of the internationally recognized Thunderbird School of Global Management. As a new company we are committed a new corporate norm. One that is Gen Y friendly. This includes virtual offices, cloud computing and the flexibility of schedule that ensures that as we grow our employee base we are able to help our employees effectively balance work/life.

One of the benefits we receive as a resident of the Thunderbird Incubator is a student intern on the business side of the company. We are working with other local educational institutions for other intens on the technical side. It's a harrowing process, interviewing interns. At the undergraduate level many are so nervous its difficult to get a real sense of who they are and what they can do, at the graduate level, we've encountered many who do not view the process as a "real" interview process.

These are some of the things we've discovered through this process:

1. We only work with interns from schools with formal internship/externship programs. We want to know its a part of their learning process and not just a job to kill time.
2. We have discovered that email communication works better than phone calls for original contacts. This works well for our corporate model as well so it has become the adopted norm for scheduling interviews (remember we are tech company).
3. By the time they get to the face to face interview we know their qualifications, if they have any. We are more concerned about whether they will fit into the corporate culture than if they know the skills we will need in advance. We embrace the training component of the internship and welcome the opportunity to find a diamond in the rough.

In early childhood we used to teach the importance of "the process" over "the product". Seems everything grows up.