By Kathlene Mullens

Kathlene Mullens, MLHR, SPHR, BSBA is the founder and CEO of Female Equality MattersTM, The "No Glass Ceiling" Certification/Brand©. With over a decade of HR experience in four Fortune 100 companies, Ms. Mullens is using that expertise in recruiting, line HR, employee development, and technology to help leverage the power of consumer spending to yield more women, with more equitable pay, in the C-suite and board rooms of companies, non-profits, and colleges/universities around the world.

You've seen them around the office. It's that heady time of year when enthusiasm and ideas fill your office in the form of that familiar yearly season. As surely as autumn follows spring, Intern Season follows Graduation Season.

While they may be doing work you don't miss (hello copy room jockey memories), as a Savvy Auntie, you see that they do far more than that and how valuable one of these experiences could be on your own niece’s or nephew's resume. How can you help them get there?

Start now.

If your little Jane or Joe is working, encourage them to work on skills that will help them with what your interns are doing. Can they help the manager out in the office at the Golden Arches? Can they lend a hand with the family finances at the nanny gig?

Show them around the office.

You can give them a leg up with visibility in your office, a mini network there, and some exposure to what they'd be doing in your environment. Approve their outfit before they come in – it should be appropriate to your office so that people can see them as part of a team there. Teach them to reach out and thank the people that they met. Show them around; make a few intros (to the interns and perhaps an HR staffer); show them which systems you use and what equipment is common. This kind of network and experience will help them with your office intern crew – or elsewhere.

Help them back on campus.

There are back-on-campus moves that will help them for the next intern season. They can work on jobs on campus that will help them be a better intern candidate. Help them figure out which kinds of experiences will help them in the "real world" or how to get some of that experience in jobs that might not obviously have it.

Encourage them to get involved in extracurricular activities.

Extracurricular activities can also help them become more attractive candidates for internships at your place and beyond. Class choices and outside-of-class courses like Excel can also help. This is your big chance to share "what you wish you'd known!"

Make sure they apply!

As intern application season starts, keep your niece or nephew in mind and informed. Leave the particulars up to them – they need to do their own application and interviews if you want them to maximize the learning. Make sure that they are applying for lots of internships to increase the odds that they land one.

Hopefully, you'll be able to help your beloved kid get started and settle in to their new internship. If not, you'll get the opportunity to help them learn the value of Plan B's and how you can learn from stumbles.

Good luck to you and your future intern stars!

For more tips on how you can help them land those internships, click here!

Photo: t0zz
Published: June 5, 2012