Here’s my intern.  Meet Marcel Schmidt, from Germany who is attending the California Internatioinal Business University (CIBU) for one semester.

I have appreciated interns throughout many of my years in San Diego, and none more than now!  Marcel actually found me on the internet!  He took the initiative to ask for an internship, and he is a very good producer of results.  His English is excellent, and he puts his head down and gets work done.

My responsibility is to see to it that Marcel has a good experience.  I have taken him to the MIT Enterprise Forum business case, I have invited him to take notes at an upcoming strategic planning facilitation that I am conducting, and I am asking him to sit in for me at a networking event where it matters that someone is in my seat when I am not there.  These activities integrate him into our culture, and my world, and hopefully enhance his interest in my success while contributing to his learning.

That is the good news.  The bad news is, of course, that he will leave.  It is a fair trade-off, in my view, because now he will go back to his country and his life and I will have contributed to him, and he will have contributed to Accountability Pays.

Having been the fortunate recipient of such good work, I look back on my own experience of school and wish I had been that smart, to work for someone and get a flavor of reality.  The closest I have come is the International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition (ICBSU), which comes to San Diego thanks to host school University of San Diego for the last time in April, because of budget cuts. It is seeking a new host University, which may mean that I will no longer be involved, and that breaks my heart.  I am one of many “judges” while student executive teams run a business (simulation).  Judging means occupying the board of directors seat for these executive teams — great fun.

But I digress.  There are excellent internship programs in San Diego at all the universities.  Additionally, UC San Marcos has a program where you can hire a team of seniors for $1,500 to take on a project — research projects are common — and the results have been stunning!  I have not partaken myself, but several of my client companies have, with good results.