Why Summer Internships Are an Investment Businesses Should MakeInterns are more than just summer help.
Each summer, college students enter companies as interns, eager to gain real-world experience. For those pursuing technical degrees, they’re skilled in code, circuits, and calculations. However, one area often overlooked in both their education and early professional experience is soft skills, particularly communication.
In industry, knowing your technical work is not enough. You also need to explain that work clearly to people who don’t share your technical background. Whether it’s to executives, vendors, or colleagues in other departments, technical professionals must convey not only what they’re working on but also why it matters. The ability to do this well is key to career progression. Yet most college professors, having never worked in industry themselves, aren’t equipped to prepare students for this essential part of professional life.
That’s where companies have a unique opportunity: to use the internship experience to bridge this communication gap.
Why communication training for interns matters
Technical interns are more than just summer help. They are your talent pipeline. Investing in their growth, particularly in communication, can accelerate their effectiveness as future full-time employees.
One high-impact way to do this? A mini speaker training program embedded within the internship experience.
Here’s how to structure such a program in three key phases.
Phase 1: Define what the program should cover. The first step is deciding what content will be most helpful to you. For technical interns, when learning to master communication, the following components are especially valuable.
Audience engagement: How to capture attention early, using a compelling question, a story, or both.
Balancing depth and clarity: Tailoring the technical level of your presentation depending on the audience.
Slide design: Creating visuals that support the message rather than distract from it.
Handling questions: Learning how to respond when you don’t know the answer.
Speech structure: Teaching interns how to organize content around a clear call to action, working backward from it to create a cohesive narrative.
These elements help interns avoid rambling and instead deliver focused, effective talks that resonate with both technical and non-technical listeners.
Phase 2: Develop and deliver the program.Whether in-person or virtual, the format should be designed for simplicity and engagement. To address speech structure, for instance, an approach is:
Start with the end in mind: What is the one thing you want your audience to take away? That becomes your call to action.
Map out key points: Identify two or three supporting arguments that naturally build toward your call to action.
Craft a compelling opening: A question, a brief anecdote, or a surprising statistic can draw people in right away.
This structure is scalable to almost any presentation and gives interns a reliable framework they can use throughout their careers.
Phase 3: Give interns a stage and feedback. Knowledge alone isn’t enough; practice is essential. Companies should provide interns with an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned and practice their communication skills. One effective method is a final presentation session at the end of the internship.
In this session, interns can present:
What they worked on
What they learned
Any tangible deliverables or outcomes they contributed
Invite executives and department leaders to attend. Their presence does two important things:
Increases interns’ visibility and confidence
Allows decision-makers to see the real value of the internship program
Interns benefit from experience, feedback, and exposure. Executives get to witness the next generation of talent in action, talent that’s not only technically capable but also ready to communicate and collaborate.
The bottom line: Technical internships are invaluable
Too often, companies treat internship programs as temporary, low-stakes engagements. But with a small investment in communication training, internships can become something much more: a launchpad for confident, articulate, and industry-ready professionals.
Companies that implement speaker training for technical interns don’t just prepare them for their final presentations. They prepare them for their futures, and potentially, yours.
Source:
https://www.inc.com/neil-thompson/why-summer-internships-for-college-students-are-an-investment-in-communication-skills-and-talent-pipeline/91201341
