Volunteer Intern Process for Program Coordinators

This page is to help Volunteer Internship Program Coordinators through the process. If you're supervising an intern and want some guidance, check out the Volunteer Intern Process for Supervisors page.

Creating and Posting Intern Job Descriptions

• Work with individual staff members to create a detailed job description for a needed internship. The job description is created on the wiki using a template, and then posted on our internships page. When supervisors want to make a change to the job description, they should change the wiki and then alert the program coods so the website can be updated.

Intern Screening/Interview

1. • During the face-to-face interview with the sponsor (and possibly one other), the FG staff member asks some questions to see if the applicant would be appropriate for the position.
   • Applicant leaves Free Geek. Interviewers talk after the interview to accept or deny the applicant (rejecting an intern is OK! We shouldn't feel forced to take people on if they won't do well in the internship for which they're applying). Applicant can apply for another internship if they don't get the one they interviewed for. Or just volunteer, or whatever.
   • Sponsor or the volunteer program coordinator calls or emails applicant the outcome.

   Let The volunteer program coordinator know if you bring someone on as a new intern (someone needs to oversee the process!). Even better, print off your new intern's application and hand it to The volunteer program coordinator.

2. If intern is brought on, their free geek supervisor should:
   • handles paperwork, evaluations, timesheets, etc. (although The volunteer program coordinator would like copies of it all, which he/she can make for herself).
   • put the intern's schedule on the Volunteer Intern Schedule page.
   • introduce the intern to everyone on staff, especially any staff that will have regular contact with them

Intern Training/Maintainence

1. The intern's Free Geek sponsor trains the new intern. Don't forget, training should happen throughout the intern's time here - it's not just a one-time thing.
2. Intern should check in weekly with sponsor, reviewing concerns about their area, documentation, etc.
3. Once you know your intern is going to keep showing up regularly, let Core know that we have a new intern (and, ideally, point to their new schedule.
4. Sponsor has an informal review with intern after 3 weeks. This is an opportunity to informally talk about what's going right, what's going wrong, is the intern happy where he/she is, or would they like to change their job description? This meeting focuses more on how the intern is doing overall than the weekly check-ins, which focus on the specifics. The volunteer program coordinator can make a form for this if you want.
5. If there are discipline problems with the intern, use the Volunteer Discipline Policy. Let The volunteer program coordinator or a member of the HR Committee know about it. If the intern came to us through an outside agency, you or The volunteer program coordinator should get in touch with their case manager-type person at that agency.

Final Wrap-up

1. Final review/wrap-up. A time to review what's happened, what they've learned, how they've improved, what they need to work on, etc. We should also get input from them about how their experience here was and if we should do something different next time.

Note: If a sponsor feels like he or she is getting overloaded with too many interns, they should speak to the volunteer program coordinator: we can stop offering internsip positions in that area. Stress levels will most likely vary with how hands-free and helpful the intern is. Sponsors might want to set limits on the number of interns they'd be willing to take on.