Beyond making coffee, site for interns gives tips
Take two Harvard grads with a combined five summers of intern experience and give them a computer. Add a dose of schmoozing skills, some business smarts and heaping amounts of wit.
Before you know it, you have Intern Memo, the website and thrice-weekly e-newsletter created this summer by brothers Will and Theodore Bressman of New York. They have made it their mission to help the nation’s interns get ahead in their fields of choice, establish valuable connections and even have some fun.
Intern Memo also focuses on social activities in New York City, where the site is based. As landing an internship increasingly becomes the doorway to the world of work, Intern Memo is tapping into a nationwide need to share experiences. The Bressmans hope to expand to other cities.
“In the last 10 years, internships have become a prerequisite for entry-level jobs,” says Jamie Fedorko, author of The Intern Files: How to Get, Keep and Make the Most of Your Internship. “You can’t get one without” an internship.
Will, 25, and Theodore, 23, co-founded the site (internmemo.com), which sent its first e-newsletter on May 28. Their sister, Ellie, 19, markets by word of mouth and on a Facebook group. The e-newsletter now boasts more than 3,000 subscribers.
“There isn’t really a resource out there for people who want to be spoken to, not down to,” says Will, who, after interning at sports and media corporations, wanted to help others trying to break into careers.
“Interning is a really funny experience,” adds Theodore, who has interned at financial companies. “It can be fun, and it can be bad. But if you have the right perspective, it’s awesome.”
On Mondays, subscribers receive a general behavioral tip, such as developing a good rapport with a boss. Wednesday’s “Internal Monologue” features diary-like entries from Intern Samantha and Intern Simon, two real-life interns using pseudonyms to write candidly about office escapades. Fridays offer a “wild card,” in which Theodore, in charge of editorial content, compiles a list of mostly free weekend events and often includes transcripts of interviews with professional bigwigs from varied industries.
“If there’s one thing we can offer, it’s … a balance between utility and levity,” says Will, who oversees Web development and potential partnerships. He works full time at a video website, while Theodore freelances for online publications. Ellie has three years left at Harvard.
Fedorko, who interned in college and is now a freelance writer, also stressed balance, urging greenhorns to find the middle road between being the “ingratiating brown-nosing intern” and “the intern who thinks they know it all.”
Blair Clark, a senior at Penn State University, recalls her first internship last summer, at a New York art gallery.
“When I started, it was overwhelming … I had to learn everything right when I got there,” from how to use the office fax machine to adapting to the fast-paced work environment, says Clark, 21. “Anything would have helped” to make the transition a bit smoother.
Next summer, the Intern Memo team hopes to expand to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
For now, the best advice these interns emeriti can give their fan base is to relax.
“Most of the time, you’re not entrusted with something that’s life or death,” Theodore says.