Issue link: https://industrialmanagement.epubxp.com/i/513969
may/june 2015 13 tions use to "teach the ropes" to newly hired employees, helping them become acclimated to the social and technical aspects of their new work environment. This can occur through formal processes, such as new employee orien- tations and structured training, and through informal processes, such as mentoring and on-the-job learning. In today's highly competitive environment, rapid onboarding has become the norm when bringing new talent into an organization. While employees used to be given months to adjust to their new roles, they're now expected to be up to speed within weeks. Rapid training and socialization fits well with the short- term nature of internships. In fact, organizations that take their internship programs seriously treat interns like regular full-time employees during the onboarding process. For example, Pittsburgh-based PNC bank puts its MBA interns through its regular new employee training and orientation program. Newly hired managers and student interns participate in training activities side by side with no distinc- tions between the two. A new full-time employee may be surprised to learn that a new colleague is a Carnegie Mellon MBA intern who will be staffed on a 10-week project. This raises the expectations for interns and managers to ensure that both stakeholders understand an internship is a real job with real responsibilities. It also can streamline selection and training, eliminating the need for redundant onboarding programs for interns and regular full-time new hires. While onboarding involves organizational actions intended to help get new employees and interns up to speed as quickly as possible, interns need to play a role in this process also. That's where encour- aging proactivity comes into play. 3. Encourage proactivity Proactivity is the exercise of disciplined, goal-direct action that helps you achieve what you intend to accomplish. If there's a problem, roadblock or barrier, A new full- time employee may be surprised to learn that a new colleague is a Carnegie Mellon MBA intern who will be staffed on a 10-week project. you solve it. You don't complain about it. That's the proactive mentality. Research on socialization has shown that when starting a new job, the specific key proactive behaviors include information seeking, feedback seeking and relationship building. Interns should be provided an environment and supportive atmosphere focused on encouraging these kinds of behaviors. The value of proactive behaviors became clear decades ago when studies of new employees at Bell Labs showed proactive behavior within the first few weeks of starting a new job predicted long-term career success within the organization. Interns should be encouraged to exhibit these same behaviors. In my internship research published recently in Human Resource Management , my colleague Shaun Pichler and I found that a combination of organizational actions, such as formal and informal mentoring, and intern proactive behaviors indepen- dently contributed to how interns came to view their employer as a potential longer-term career destination. The combination of both also had syner- gistic effects, further amplifying interns' learning. And the more interns learned about their internship employer, the more likely they were to accept full-time job offers with the same employer. Research published in Management Science last year also shows interns are more likely to stick with an employer when they have friendship networks inside the organization, a consequence of proactive behavior. Investing in both rapid onboarding and encouraging intern proactivity paid dividends in terms of higher yields on employment offers. 4. Embrace the learning-performance tension Because of their short duration, intern- ships magnify the tension between learning and performance that is inherent to any new work setting. Specifically, there are trade-offs between these two critical outcomes. On the one hand, focused learning involves developing new skills that may involve sacrificing a unit of short- term performance. If the employee is learning something new, it means the worker is not doing something that he or she already does well. But as workers build new skills, they also build their capability to perform better in the future. On the other hand, focusing on performance involves doing what employees already do well, which involves sacrificing a unit of short-term learning. Although this may help them perform well in the short term, it also means that they're not developing new skills that may help them perform better in the future. Consequently, there is an ongoing trade-off between learning and perfor- mance whenever we face a new task, job or work environment. How can this tension be managed most effectively? In my own research on MBA internships published last year in Academy of Management Learning and Education , I found that interns with managers who provided an environment that supports both these goals learned the most and performed the best. Consistent with this, experimental research on creative performance that I published this year in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes with my colleague Ella Miron-Spektor at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology indicated that the most creative performance occurred when subjects were encouraged to have both learning and performance- oriented mindsets. Learning-oriented mindsets focus on skill development and learning from mistakes, while performance- oriented mindsets focus on displaying one's abilities and outperforming one's peers. The key is that by supporting and encouraging both mindsets, you provide interns the freedom and autonomy to choose which is more important at a given time. Of course, trying to emphasize both learning and performance can be challenging. So if you need to lean more