Non-Traditional Internships: Startup Internships

Today Intern Memo sits down with Stuart Schultz, founder of Gradspot.com, a website specifically designed to help recent graduates smoothly transition to life in the real world. In this way, Gradspot is a lot like Intern Memo's older brother. In fact, Intern Ted actually blogs for the site under a different nom de guerre. Anyway, Schultz gives us a great idea of what an entrepreneur is looking for in an intern. So get out your trapper keepers, you're gonna want to get some of this stuff down.

Intern Memo: What does Gradspot look for in its interns? Do you think a different skill set is required to intern at a startup?

Stuart Schultz: They need to be a self-starter, willing to pick up skills they don't already have, wear many hats, and truly buy into the idea. While every startup should have a plan and a goal, the day-to-day is going to be a lot less structured than a mature company. In fact, one of the most important aspects of any startup is that it is flexible with it's strategy and is willing to react to feedback and market conditions. Thus, many times you plan to do something for the day, and you end up doing something completely different. An intern has to be comfortable with this. For example, I hired a Gradspot.com intern last summer to help create content, and she ended up also running focus groups and organizing events around the city. For me, it was fantastic that our intern didn't complain once about switching roles, and also had a great time doing it. But recognize what this means. Since interns will be asked to do odds and ends (as everyone in a startup must), they're going to have to be comfortable filling several different roles (yes, they're hired for the content side, but understand they may have to do book-keeping, or marketing). The one "gotcha" about fitting so many roles is that while of course the employees/founders/ceo of the startup will help any intern whenever necessary, it's much better if the intern can get an assignment and is willing to run with it. Sometimes they'll even have to run with it without any guidance.

Finally, an intern has to truly buy into the project. No matter what you're doing and no matter how successful you are in a startup, people will tell you it's a bad idea (people were telling me Google was a bad idea a few years ago). Thus, any intern has to buy into the idea to the point where they'd be willing to defend it. For Gradspot.com, we looked for someone who could relate to the transition from college to the real world and wanted to help other soon-to-be and recent graduates take the next step. Keep in mind that if the intern likes the idea that much, they'll have an awesome time working for the startup. And that's a big part of what drives people in startups – it's entrepreneurs following their dreams and having an awesome time doing it.

Keep in mind that one way to get experience with a startup is to intern for one. The other way is to do it on your own. You can print funny t-shirts and sell them on campus (you'll learn a lot even by doing just this project – you'll have to figure out what designs test best with your audience and how to test them, how to produce the shirts, how to distribute them, what type of marketing you'll need, how to set prices, how to sell, etc.). And also – if you do this one summer, chances of you being hired the next summer by a real startup are a lot higher. Any entrepreneur would certainly hire someone with past experience as long as they took something away from that experience.

IM: How can a greenhorn college student present themselves as a qualified candidate if their work experience to date is not totally pertinent to the job at hand?

SS: There is no way that work experience isn't pertinent to entrepreneurship. As I mentioned before, any intern has to be willing to wear a lot of hats. I'm sure that there is someway to apply any skill to entrepreneurship. Let's go with the greenhorn metaphor and say you worked on an Alaskan fishing boat last summer. It doesn't seem like it will help you with an internship with an Internet company, but it certainly can. You clearly have an obscene work ethic are willing to jump into the unknown. Both are really necessary in a startup. So what I'd suggest is to figure out a way to spin prior work experience to fit with the gig you're trying to get.

IM: You worked in finance before starting Gradspot? Would you choose that trajectory again? Or would you go straight into killing it as a young entrepreneur.

SS: It depends. Do you have a great idea and are people willing to give you money to pursue it? If so, you have to jump on the opportunity. You're young and have a long career ahead of you. No one will fault you for seizing an opportunity if it doesn't work. In fact, many people will like that you're entrepreneurial and hire you over someone who took a safe career path.

Otherwise, if you know you want to be an entrepreneur, try to determine what you'll walk away with at the end of the day by taking a full-time job. By working in finance, I was exposed to a ton of different Internet companies which has enabled me to build contacts for Gradspot.com as well as provided me with ideas and skills. So my prior experiences were really valuable. Had any of my business ventures been time sensitive I would have had a much harder decision.

And I hate to point out the elephant in the room but can you afford to? Are you saddled with student debt? Maybe becoming an entrepreneur out of the gates versus working a little to pay off debt might be worth it. But even if you take a full-time gig doesn't mean you can't be a weekend warrior. Once again, pursue a t-shirt company. And when I say t-shirt company I mean anything, but by now I think you get the idea.

Finally, if you're interning for a startup, I'll assume this means you want to either work for one or create your own – which I think is awesome. But that being said, I want you to be clear about what you're getting yourself into. Above and beyond all of the characteristics I described above (you need to be a self-starter, wear many hats, not let being intimidated by the unknown paralyze you), you've got to be a risk taker. You're forgoing a structured career path and a consistent salary for the unknown. Granted more risk means more reward, it's still scary at times. And you have to be willing to fail. Many of the world's best entrepreneurs failed many times before their first success. Yet, in my opinion, if you're got the right mindset and working/leading a startup is what you want to do, there's no better career. I'm currently working on Gradspot.com which is my third experience with a startup (after interning at Flooz.com during high school and launching Travelgoat.com), and I'm have a blast doing it.

There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth...whatever that means. We'll be back on Thursday with a profile about interning at facebook. Apparently all the kids love this social networking phenomenon these days.

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