Advice for running internships

[Jinmu Staddon]

Hey everyone! I was wondering if anyone out there who has run archviz internships before would have any advice for me. Our company, a medium size AEC firm, is doing an archiviz internship for the first time this year. I've directed interns and taken part in other types of internships in the past--industrial design, architecture, graphic design--some being successful, others not, but never in archviz. The intern we're getting is a freshman architecture student and has basically no experience doing renderings, so I'm trying to figure out what we'd even have them do. I didn't get to choose the candidates as I didn't even know we were going to have an intern this year. Next year I will definitely involve myself in the process now that I know it's a thing.

I want to make sure they can contribute something, which probably means a lot of the menial/non-3D related tasks we've been putting off, but I also don't want them to have a bad internship experience. What do you guys typical have interns work on? How do I balance devoting a ton of time teaching someone the absolute basics of rendering while still actually getting some useful work out of them (this is a paid internship).

Also, general internship experiences/stories welcome! What made your internship especially good or bad? I didn't do much interning when I started out. Somehow jumped right into freelance instead, so I'm interested in your perspective.

[Scott Schroeder]

I'm in the same boat as you, though I'm coming from the managing interns perspective rather than being an intern myself. When we have interns on staff, especially 1st or 2nd year students without much studio experience, we do indeed turn them loose on the more menial tasks like prop cleanup and organization. It's in no way glamorous work, but having an intern do it is far more cost effective (we pay our interns decently though) than even a junior level employee. Yet, doing prop cleanup is a clear way to make sure that the intern can indeed follow basic directions and be able to work within a studio environment. I usually set up a template for them so they can render easily if they do not have much initial vray experience, as well as show them the basics of the scripts they will be using like relink bitmaps. Then, for the most part, I turn them loose on their task and check in with them as needed. Having templates set up helps free you up from having to show them everything. Though, if your company hasn't devoted time to you helping interns, you need to talk with them about that. Typically, I try to get at least 25% of my week devoted to non-project work to work with the interns. If they expect you to be 100% working and helping interns, that's too much of a workload for you and you won't be able to really do well at either your job or helping the interns learn.

As the intern gains confidence in their skills and shows that they can indeed follow directions, we usually turn them loose on a few projects towards the end of their internship so they can truly get some real world project experience. Even the interns that I have had that were not able to get real project experience, due to us having too big of a backlog of prop work needing to be done, I've given high praise for in recommendations. Because as I said, prop work isn't fun work but it is incredibly important to the project team that those props work as intended when they are used in a project. If the intern demonstrates that they can follow directions, work on their own without me playing hovering art director, and get through their needed workload then that's a very positive sign that they will do well in their first full time studio environment. 

Many times, we've ended up hiring the intern as a full time junior artists right after they complete their internship if they are later in their schooling or we keep in contact with them and try to get them hired once they graduate.

I've also had some not-so-great interns, but those stories are for a later day. Today, we're focusing on the positives.

[Jinmu Staddon]

Hey Scott. Thanks for your perspective. Very helpful! Good point about making sure that there is a reasonable expectation for how much time I should be setting aside to manage the internship. It will be interesting to hear what the candidate’s expectations are for their internship as well. I like the idea of having them set some goals at the beginning to get skilled enough by the end to help out on real projects. I’ll also encourage them to work on personal projects in their free time. I remember tinkering on my own after work being really valuable when I was first starting out. 

[Scott Schroeder]

1 hour ago, Jinmu Staddon said:

Hey Scott. Thanks for your perspective. Very helpful! Good point about making sure that there is a reasonable expectation for how much time I should be setting aside to manage the internship. It will be interesting to hear what the candidate’s expectations are for their internship as well. I like the idea of having them set some goals at the beginning to get skilled enough by the end to help out on real projects. I’ll also encourage them to work on personal projects in their free time. I remember tinkering on my own after work being really valuable when I was first starting out. 

These are all good points, but do stress to them to take time away from the screen as well. Maybe you can get the idea of "Free Friday" to happen with the intern where Friday is their day to tinker, or maybe work on something like one of the Twinmotion community challenges.

[Guest Jason M. Easley]

Thanks for offering a great opportunity specially for fresher. It will  prevail them to learn practical knowledge. 
Please, make it clear ,people any where can attend this scheme.

[Jinmu Staddon]

On 3/1/2022 at 7:57 AM, Jason M. Easley said:

Thanks for offering a great opportunity specially for fresher. It will  prevail them to learn practical knowledge. 
Please, make it clear ,people any where can attend this scheme.

Hi Jason. I do agree that interns should get some practical experience. I avoided internships when I was starting out because I couldn't afford to do a bunch of free busywork for someone while trying to pay rent in NYC or Chicago.

This is the first year we're doing the internship, and it wasn't advertised anywhere. Since we're only a two person team, I didn't even have this on my mind until my boss offered to place an existing internship candidate with our group. I'm hoping next year we can open it up and have the whole normal application process. We'll see how things go this summer!

[Jinmu Staddon]

On 2/25/2022 at 12:13 PM, Scott Schroeder said:

These are all good points, but do stress to them to take time away from the screen as well. Maybe you can get the idea of "Free Friday" to happen with the intern where Friday is their day to tinker, or maybe work on something like one of the Twinmotion community challenges.

Yeah that's a good point. I definitely want to make sure they have a bit of freedom to play and be creative. Often the best way to learn assuming you have the passion for it.