Four unique ways workplace supervisors transform Genesys Works students

A Genesys Works internship is long, intense, and deeply rewarding. Over the course of a year, each student will spend nearly 1000 hours working alongside colleagues who have many more years of experience. Yet they hold their own. There are many reasons for this success. Students are highly motivated to change their own lives and join the economic mainstream, and they train for hundreds of hours before entering their internship.

But there is one crucial factor that we can't overlook: the motivation and talent supervisors at our client companies bring to developing their high school interns into young professionals. Because supervisors spend so much time with interns, they have a profound influence on students' career aspirations and life direction.

As recognition of the dedication and energy supervisors bring to their interactions with interns, here are four examples of techniques supervisors use to ensure that students are able to transform themselves and add value to their workplace. 

1. Issue specific challenges. We find that supervisors take the Genesys Works experience very seriously as a development opportunity for interns, and they invest themselves in making sure that students are always stimulated and challenged on the job. When an intern masters a task, the best supervisors commend them and then find something new to add onto it.
2. Serve as a link to new networks. When young professional Lulite told her supervisor she was applying to the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, her supervisor knew exactly what to do: introduce her to an influential alum upstairs who could write her a letter of recommendation. Other supervisors have connected students to colleagues to help with a senior project or learn about a more specific area of interest.
3. Find new areas for interns to explore. Four years ago, Genesys Works interns mainly performed jobs in areas like help desk and deployment. Today, there are also interns filling network security, website updates, project management support, and quality assurance roles! Much of this change has been driven by supervisors at the workplace, who see what Genesys Works interns can do and experiment by pushing them into brand new roles. 
4. Offer support for issues beyond work. All of the preceding techniques require that supervisors get to know their interns very well, and we are always impressed with the relationships young professionals form with their workplaces and colleagues. The best stories of support come out of incidental conversations interns and supervisors have about classes, college applications, or simply life. One young professional got exactly this kind of support when his supervisor wrote him a letter of recommendation for a national scholarship program.

So there you have it--a small sampling of the many, many ways supervisors find to support students on the job. Do you currently work with a Genesys Works intern, or are you an intern yourself? Have you observed other ways workplace mentors help transform students? Let us know in the comments.