Good in theory:1-1 training

After this week, I have noticed that there is a problem with standardization of the internship program. Some trainers, who are formal leaders, under-use their leadership and do not allocate enough work for their trainee to take part in. It is my observation that some interns are not working on projects all the time and instead need to search for tasks to complete. On the other hand, some trainers are allocating a lot of responsibility to the intern and treating them as a full time associate. Granted, when we were hired it was made clear that we would be summer associates meaning that we are first year employees for the summer term. The criticism each intern receives is different because each trainer has a different style of completing a project. For that reason, the style of learning that an intern must adopt is the exact one of the trainer. Trainers vary a lot in what responsibilities they give to interns and how much they expect of them. In order to standardize the internship, I think it would be helpful if the trainers attended sessions on how to coach an intern. If there were guidelines and day to day agendas along with more training incorporated on the desk, it would create a more homogenous internship for every intern.

AlphaSights is a very collaborative environment that emphasizes the need for teamwork. Although this is a very crucial aspect to the company, I think it could be improved during the internship. Currently, each intern is assigned to only one trainer on the team. This creates a very solid mentor-mentee relationship, however, I think it would be better if interns rotated to different members of the team weekly. Not only would this increase exposure to different styles of work, but it would also allow the intern to properly join the team. The only times per day the team is actually sitting together and collaborating is once during the morning, afternoon, and evening. If each team member got to work with the intern for a week, there would be solid relationships that formed with all team members. An additional benefit would be that the intern would gain exposure to different types of criticism. Lastly, multiple opinions and judgement of the intern’s progress would be a more fair way to assess if she got a full-time offer or not.