Episode 52: Professionalism for Interns

Episode Descriptor

In this podcast with special guest Amos Gelb, you’ll learn how to navigate the workplace with confidence by mastering the key elements of professionalism for those new to the workforce. We’ll explore the vital connection between professionalism and hard and soft skills, showing how technical expertise is amplified by strong interpersonal abilities like teamwork, accountability, and emotional intelligence. Whether you’re an intern or early in your career, this episode offers actionable insights to help you stand out, grow your skills, and build a foundation for success in any professional environment.

Episode Recap

The key learnings are that professionalism encompasses both hard skills (technical abilities) and soft skills (interpersonal abilities). Hard skills vary by industry but can include writing, video editing, and data analysis. Soft skills are critical and include punctuality, reliability, accountability, communication (writtem and verbal), emotional intelligence, and a positive, adaptable attitude. Interns need to demonstrate professionalism through their actions, not just claim to have these skills on a resume. The goal is for interns to become indispensable and “furniture” in the workplace by going above and beyond, taking on tasks no one else wants, continuously learning new skills, and obtaining a positive professional reference for a future full-time position.

Episode Transcript

Episode 52: Professionalism for Interns

Kelly Callahan-Poe

Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms Podcast. Today’s guest is Amos Gelb. Amos is a former award-winning TV journalist who today runs the premier experiential media program for college students. For over two decades, he’s been a bridge for students between what they learn in college and what they need to succeed in the workplace. Graduates of his program are today generational leaders in their professions, ranging from journalism and content creation to political communications, PR and tech. Welcome Amos.

Amos Gelb

Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Kelly

Let’s talk about why we picked this topic to chat about today.

Amos

Well, you know it’s a vital topic. It’s very apropos for me, because I have a whole new cohort coming in, and every time it’s the same thing, introducing them to this idea of professionalism, and we’re going to jump into professionalism.

Kelly

But before you even go there, how do you explain the importance of an internship to college students, like, how are you selling them in on the concept to begin with?

Amos

Well, basically, there are they faced three problems. The very problem is that while they learn all kinds of stuff at school, they really don’t know what media is about, whether it’s PR or journalism. What happens in the real world, as you know, doesn’t relate to what they’re learning. So how do we bridge that? The second thing is that it said, old trope, right? You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without the job. And so, what I describe it is, we’re the escalator. We put them on the escalator going ahead. So many of these kids come in without internships, or they’ve done some kind of remote thing, right? And, and then the third one is that they basically have to learn a whole new set of mores, and what the media really is, or how they have to behave, is unlike anything they’ve been prepared for. Can’t blame colleges. That’s not really what they’re designed to do. But so, this is why your internship, you’ve got to be able to make the leap. You’ve got to you’re going to want to get a job. And basically, you need the skills, which we’re going to be talking about, to do that that they don’t have.

Kelly

I’m going to push it a little bit further, and I’m going to say that ultimately, these are real world experiences, obviously, which is a huge benefit to getting a full-time job, but I want to say flat out at the beginning, the reason why you want these internships is for the positive referral. So that means that the experience that they have and the experience they project this professionalism topic is really important today, because that referral is the key to getting a full-time job, and that referral is really the beginning of networking, right? And the whole idea that every contact that you make is a network, and that adage of it’s not who, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And that’s the truth be told about getting jobs in the future, don’t you think?

Amos

Absolutely. And in the process of it, it’s also getting to know who the hell they are as people, as adults. So, but yes, if you got to get as I say, you got to get on the escalator. You got to have that person who’s going to vouch for you. And how many jobs have you learned? Have you seen hired recently that didn’t come because basically, somebody knew somebody at some point along the way?

Kelly

To be honest with you, it’s very rare that I’ll just grab a blind resume. Yeah, it’s usually some sort of referral, or if I get, you know, 50-75 resumes in you spend an average of six seconds, maybe six to eight seconds, I think is the number looking at the resume.

Referrals are extremely important.

Amos

I don’t know any job recently that I can at any level. I can tell you right now that is a cold hire.

Kelly

Well, we’re going to talk about resumes another time. I time, but today we’re going to talk about professionalism. So how would you define professionalism?

Amos

It covers a whole bunch of things. It’s the hard skills and the soft skills, right? And I know, and basically it covers how you do what you’re able to do, and that sort of sums up everything. So doesn’t matter how skilled you are doing something, if you don’t have the ability to communicate, work and behave professionally, your skills come to nothing.

Kelly

So, we talked a little bit about in a previous call, expectations. So, professionalism is a lot about expectations. From my perspective, as a hiring manager or someone who’s going to hire an intern, I have various expectations. So, let’s talk about first like, what are the key elements of professionalism in the marketplace?

Amos

Well, can we start somewhere first, right? Which is what I want to start with, is what the kids, forgive me, what these young students understand it to be, and that the problem is and is that we’re at two different parts of the world. You’re hiring them and running them as the employer, I’m the one on the other side who sees them come in and got to get them to a point where they’re going to be useful and functional and ability to actually deliver something to you, there’s some advantage to what they’re doing for them to be able to get the experience. Yeah, so, but I would start with the point is, what do they understand what are their expectations? And that’s the key problem. Is that for them, especially in this post COVID generation, what do they understand to be acceptable behavior, just as no relationship to what happens in the real world today?

Kelly

Is it worth exploring what those things are? What are you what are you hearing from the students? And where is this coming from? Are these perceptions? Are they taught any?

Amos

Are they not taught any of these things? That they’re not taught any of these things? It starts with accountability. There is. There’s no There’s so little accountability. Now in education at any level, the kids aren’t. There’s nothing to hold them to perform the way the grading systems work. It’s mediocrity.

Kelly

Depends on the school.

Amos

Depends on the school, absolutely depends on the school. But increasingly, a lot of the students are heading for the safe be right and to get by. They don’t want to hurt they don’t want to hurt themselves by risking so their risk averse. I would say part of it is that, from a personal perspective, they’ve been it’s been reaffirmed, and this is everywhere that they’re not ready for disappointment, that disappointment isn’t something they should have to suffer. And if they do it often, and I don’t want to cheapen it, but it comes into issues of mental health and other issues. Well, which get which cheapens really significant mental health issues, but so they’re not used to disappointment. The idea is that the employer is meant to meet them where they are and that and their interests and their feelings and their sense of engagement accomplishment matter, right, which, frankly, in most workplaces they don’t, and so there’s this whole focus on the me of this, which now, again, I want to be very clear, this is not to say that these people have, that students today have a chronic flaw, that this is something that that I’m capable overcoming, that they’re a lost cause. Completely the opposite, the way I equate it today is even more is that it’s the person going into the gym for the first time. But instead of not having worked out since they were on a local team, these guys haven’t ever worked out. So, the idea of lifting weights or doing sit ups or doing the uncomfortable stuff that have the outcome, that is a new concept to them. So, then the question becomes, okay, so it’s actually starting the very beginning, what is professionalism? And rather than asking what I think it is, I’d actually asked, you know, you’re the one that I’ve got to get them ready for. So how do you define it?

Kelly

Well, I want to talk a little bit about, I mean, professionalism is a whole range of things that we’re going to talk about in terms of hard and soft skills, in terms of getting people ready to work in a professional environment. So, I think let’s talk about expectations. And for me, for someone who hires interns, my basic expectations for an intern are someone who’s punctual. They’re on time. There’s respect for other people’s time, they’re reliable, accountable and trustworthy. All those things go hand in hand. You demonstrate that you’re accountable by delivering what you have committed to, which builds trust right in the relationship and emotional intelligence, which is a big topic that we talk a lot about, in terms of, can you manage your own emotions? Do you have basic social skills? Do you show empathy? Do you have motivation? But most importantly, and you and I talked about this is communication skills, how you present yourself, verbally and in writing, how you present yourself means a lot of things, dressing, how you dress, maintaining good hygiene, which contributes to a professional.

And I’m going to give you some examples that are that may sound silly, but there’s some things that maybe have not been really spelled, spelled out, right? So, I don’t expect an intern to wear a t-shirt, a hoodie, a baseball cap, flip flops, sandals to work. That’s a red flag to me, that shows disrespect. Wear deodorant. That’s a basic one, but it’s had to be a conversation in the past. It really has. You know, that also applies. If you’re working online, you and I chat about this the other day, your backdrop, you know, if I don’t want to see your unmade bed behind you. I want to make sure that you know what you’re wearing from the from the top up, also matters. I don’t want you having your baseball cap on and lounging on the couch, you’re still at a job, right, regardless of how and where you’re showing up to that job. So those are some basic expectations. And I want to talk a little bit about, kind of, like, expand on this, about acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. So those are expectations. Can we talk a little bit about, like, what your list of unacceptable behaviors are outside of what we’ve already talked about?

Amos

Okay, so my unacceptable behaviors start with, as you say, punctuality, right? It’s, it’s the, it’s the simplest things, punctuality, um, I put in a lot of it under respect. Yeah, right. So, it can be a respect for a person, a respect for a place, place, the thing that you talk about of dress and attire, I have a rule when we go to the White House or the Pentagon or the Capitol, doesn’t matter who’s in power has no do power. These are places. These are these are the temples of the United States, right? And they should be respected. You have no idea that, even though I say, come properly dressed, men don’t wear sneakers, and they come in sneakers, and they say, well, that’s all I got. And I’m like, you don’t you don’t get to do that. Right? The point that I say is this idea of you’re not too good for anything. It’s this line of you say yes until you’ve earned the right to say no, and none of them will have earned the right to say no to anything in the program, right? So. And then there’s personal space, right that your boss, your superior, whoever they are, even if they’re just one step ahead of you, you need to respect their personal space, be it physically or online, right? So, you’re not going to be chummy. One of the things you an example is when people ask to be linked in friends accepted within a week of starting someplace. It’s like, when I when I see that, even as a student, I’m like, no, we’re not doing that, right? So, a lot of that, those are key, right? And as you say, just the presentation, I say it’s all about first impressions, that you that that perception is not nine tenths of the law. Perception is the law. And the perception that you make on that first encounter will be the perception that will endure no matter what they do, how good they see themselves. So, I’m you’ve kicked you ticked off a bunch of things. I all, I agree with all of those, but it sort of comes back down to very simply. It starts with basically respect, respect for the people who work around you, respect for the fact that you are at the bottom of the heap and nothing. You have the right to nothing. So, expect nothing, and you’re not going to be disappointed. Expect something more. You can disappoint others.

Kelly

That’s absolutely true. And I wanted to mention a couple of actual intern quotes that of things that interns have said to me and in the past. And one was “I’m not interested in doing that.” Another one was “that is beneath me.”

And so, you have to start somewhere and so that to me, falls in the bad, negative attitude category. And so, you’re, you’re not going to go very far if that’s your attitude walking into an internship. There’s this quote that I love by Herb Kelleher. I say “you don’t hire for skills; you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” So, to me, that’s something, when someone comes in with a really positive attitude and they’re curious, and then they’re enthusiastic, I can teach them anything I want in an internship, right? And we’re going to roll into hard skills and soft skills in a minute. But the attitude is really important, right?

Amos

And, and the idea, also, what I say to the folks is that, you know, it’s, you know, they have, I have them for 16 weeks, right? Yeah. And, and what I say to them is, 16 weeks is no time at all, but in some ways, it’s a long time. My what I what I urge all the students to do is a to do something they’ve never done before, which is, which is to be strategic, to look at this, and you go in to see and spend the first week just watching, right and then go and seek out the things nobody wants to do because everybody is overworked and under resourced, and you start to earn it. And what I say to them is, what your goal is, is to become to that point where you become furniture. And that’s my line of they all look at me like, what do I mean? And I and what I say is, when you go into a room, you sit down, you don’t think about the furniture. The chairs going to hold your weight is going to do its job. That’s what you want to become. You don’t want to become the intern who is the high maintenance that you take people’s time. You want to be that person who’s just always there. As I say, you want to stop being the intern and stop and become Hey, where’s Jane, or Where’s John, right? Where is the by name you want to, I know an internship has been successful. If people, I get calls saying, when’s my next and say the name of that, and that is because they’ve done all the things that you’ve talked about, and that’s sort of the end goal. They’ve got to understand that professionalism is about the end goal, at least from my perspective, you want them, as you say, to get that resume you want to be that first stop on that ladder, or if you’ve been on one or accelerator, but so, so I. You’re right. You hit the very key things, minus sort of trying to get them to change their mindset.

Kelly

Well, that’s what I want to talk about next. I mean, how else do you get them there to change the mindset, obviously, then, other than having kind of a professionalism, 101, seminar at the beginning of you of your internship experiences, how do you get them to change their mindset? I mean, over the years, based on your experience. It does that happen through the context of an of interview? Does it? Do they not take it from you, in essence, as a teacher or professor, or when they’re more likely to take it from a potential employer? How does that work?

Amos

Okay? So, this is, this is where, where I think everybody has misunderstood what experiential learning is, right? So, most people think experiential learning is you do an internship, and you do some courses, right? And the answer is, no, that’s just an internship with a couple of courses. The idea so what we do is, everything that we teach is wrapped around the idea of accelerating their performance. So, every day that I see them in class, I or the other faculty, we’re asking them, what are they doing, what are they experienced? What are they learning? What are the issues they’re having there? What have they what are they experienced? And then giving them the feedback on that experience and putting it in in the context, the biggest thing though, that we do is that in the work that we do outside is driving this idea of accountability. Yeah, that that you it’s not about you, right? You’ve got to do the best job you can to satisfy the audience. And the audience can be the people you’re working with. It can be the boss. It can be, if you’re doing media, the people who are watching it. But how do you drive accountability? And the idea is, the tandem is they have what’s happening in work, and then you get them to come back and consider that and think about that, and to see other employer impulses, so they can understand a bit more. They can put some context to what they’re seeing at the internship. Generally, what happens is that it sort of sneaks up on them, right? I’m with you. We talk about what you need to do to be successful. We talk about those soft skills and hard skills. They don’t pay any attention. It doesn’t mean anything until they’re in the workplace, and then you can come back, and you reinforce them and time and time again. So, it’s it, it’s the balance, from my perspective, it’s I’m always pushing them, I’m always urging them. I’m trying to get them to take more responsibilities across the board, but also to risk right, to be able to contribute, to try things, to grow, right?

Kelly

To your experiential point. So, you can teach them all you want, but they’re not going to really learn it until they experience it, what it’s really like in a live environment, and they receive feedback, positive and negative on their performance, right?

Amos

The negative is the most important, because if they’re only receiving positive. Feedback, they’re not growing. They’re not learning. And so, it’s a matter of trying to get them to understand that negative feedback is actually positive, because it’s helping them grow. There is one of the negative sides of our current grading system, because if you do badly, your GPA is gone, and you’re messed up. So, there’s no, there’s no room to do badly, right? And so that’s but we know in the workplace, half the time, I look at when, when they started internships, I said, you’re on the first day, you’re a blithering idiot, right? I don’t care how smart you are. You’re not going to have; you’re not going to have a Nobel Prize for whatever. You’re still a blithering idiot because you don’t know the organization, so you got to and you’re going to make mistakes. Okay, that’s fine. You know, what we say to them is, if you make a mistake, it’s what did I do wrong? Well, first of all, I’m sorry, what I do wrong? It will never happen again. And that’s it. You never, it never happens again, and then you move on.

Kelly

Well, that’s a good segue into hardens off skills. You know, harden hard skills are basically, you know, those technical abilities that you need. What are the basic hard skills that you see or almost required for people to get an internship today in your program.

Amos

Well, it varies, right? Because every industry is slightly different, right? So, if you’re going into journalism, you need to have writing clips, you have to have stories. You have to show that you can write and deliver a coherent story, and now increasingly, you have to also be able to show that you can edit video, yeah, if you’re going into production, you need to show a higher level of hard skills, video, better editing After Effects, And those skills, preferably also audio. And understanding the difference between video and audio, right? If you’re going into PR, you need to have the skills to be able to do the excels, do the kind of support you’re going to be able to do. You need to be able to show that you can write that kind of thing. And you are also it’s preferable if you have understanding of some kind of databases that work for where they are, right? If you’re going into if you’re going to Capitol Hill, if you want to do a press, you need to know your politics, right? You need to know what the issues are you you’re not going to know how it works, because most of them haven’t worked on the Hill, but you need, and that the hard skill there is you need that political bone, right? Unless, unless you’re a student government or somebody who only thinks about politics all day. In that case, that, to me, is the hard skill you need for me to go, we’re going to get your place on the hill. So, it varies right now. There are some across the board. People should know social media, anybody, any of this generation, has to as a basis, understand how these but they all do, right? It’s right. They should all understand photography. But they all understand photography because they’ve all taken pictures and posted them, right? These are passive knowledge, passive hard skills, which part of what our program is we actually, we describe it as turning passive to active knowledge, so that they don’t go when somebody says, oh, we don’t have anybody to take a picture. Can you just come and take some photos here? We need them to go, yeah. Now increasingly, we need them to also know some AI sure familiarity area with air and a separator is a touch of coding. But as I say, it’s, it varies depending on where they’re going.

Kelly

There’s a couple of things that we talked about earlier. One was you talked about how everything is a tool and the Batman’s utility. Can you explain that?

Amos

Sure. So, the idea is you just asked what the hard skills are for each of those professions. And what we say to them is, but you won’t have all of them. Well, our ethos here is expert in one professional and all, so that if you’re going to go into PR, you better be able to edit the video. If you’re going to be a video content creator, you better be able to write the press release, right? So, the idea is that you can do it all. My story, my favorite story here is of one student who hated production. She was PR, hated production, and she did a and one of the things we do is we do a lighting workshop, basic lighting, three-point lighting. If you don’t know what it is, it’s very simple of how you the simplest way to do a lighting setup. She was working at her she her internship had turned into a job. All, and she was working there, and she was asked to come on the shoot for one of the clients, and the cameraman, who I actually knew, who was not very good, couldn’t make it look right, just it looked awful. And she said, and everybody was losing their minds, and she goes, well, why don’t we just try simple three-point lighting here? And set up a light, and it looked great, right? This is a woman who never want to do production. After that, she was promoted and put in charge of all production for all of the clients because she had simply taken a workshop new three-point lighting. So, the Batman tool belt is Batman’s tool belt has a boomerang. This came from a former colleague of mine. As you point out, Batman has he has a utility belt, and there’s a boomerang. Who the hell needs a boomerang? Except for that one episode when Batman needed the boomerang So, and that’s how we try and show them. And as a that old line of I’m not interested, I’m not interested in video. I’m not interested. I’m not interested. Yeah, yeah, but you never know when somebody else will be.

Amos

Yes, and that’s why you want the other thing that you said that I thought was really important in terms of communication, you talked about how writing is thinking. Can you expand on that?

Amos

So, I think people don’t treat don’t teach writing correctly, right? Writing is just the act of actually putting down words on a paper. Is just, it’s a hard skill of typing, right? What, what writing really is about. And to me, writing is, to me, it’s both a hard and a soft skill. It’s the ultimate hard and soft skill. Why? Because writing isn’t about putting words on the page. Writing is about being able to think coherently, to gather information, sort information, and then the writing is developed, is delivering the information, right? That’s, we say that. That’s what, what the program is. It’s about. It’s not about journalism. It’s not about PR. It’s about information gathering, sorting and delivery of information. Writing is the exercise of you cannot write well unless you can think clearly. Otherwise, your writing is going to be crap. And so, the idea for us is every type of piece of writing that you do has to start with the thinking, what is the client? We teach something. It’s slightly different. It’s the three W’s, right. Who, what, why? Who are you? Who is this thing for? What is it they need? And why do they need it? And if you think on that, on anything that you write that will define how you how you organize your thoughts. And then, as I say, then it’s just a matter of hitting keys or using one of those old things, antique things, called a pen, to actually put it down.

Kelly

I love that. Let’s slide into soft skills. And we’ve talked about this a little bit already in terms of, you know, what are those basic interpersonal abilities?

Amos

But I think, can I just say something about the soft skills? What I find most hilarious about what we’re talking about is you and I have both experienced this. It’s not that they’re bad, they’re not bad kids, right? They’re not they just don’t know, right? They just, they don’t know deodorant. They don’t know wearing a hoodie isn’t appropriate. They don’t know that. That communication with somebody in a hierarchy, you need to be clear. It’s, it’s not about them. They don’t know, right? I actually look, as I said, a lot of my graduates, recent ones, have gone on to do unbelievable stuff that have outshone my career, which was pretty good. I was happy. These kids are doing amazing things. It’s not that they don’t have the capabilities, right? It’s that the ones who want to get in the gym and work, they are as talented and as motivated as you and I were. Right. Every generation has them. That’s not the point is, I love it when I look on a resume and what, you know, this isn’t a resume thing, but they have all these soft skills written down. And I’m like, I’m punctual, I’m like, where they’re going to know that on the first day, right? I work hard. Well, that’s going to be for them to decide. I get along with people. Well, you’ll find out, won’t you? And it’s like, these words don’t mean anything, and these and these kids have been told that they need to put them in because they were on some kind of template, but they don’t really know what they mean. And here’s how I know, because the kids who have done something, the kids who come in with that thing, they don’t put that stuff down because they know it’s silly. They don’t need to say they’re going to work hard. They’re stuff shows it.

Kelly

And a lot of this is, the idea of showcasing your value, instead of saying it, you’re showcasing your value. So how do you showcase your value?

Amos

The challenge? Okay, so this is where my side of the picture comes in. Is that basically the kids, you know, that’s in where we place the interns, right? Because a lot of it is so out of their control. If they come to an organization that maybe I’ve had internships which are regular places, are absolutely brilliant, but then they’re in a lull, and the student goes and they have an absolutely awful time, because they don’t, they’re not having the opportunity previous people have had. So basically, the opportunity, it’s part of it’s out of their hand. But then what is the opportunity? Once you get in there. It’s what I say, being strategic. You prove it by going above and beyond you. You find, as I say, what they want to do within the first two weeks is find the stuff that nobody wants to do and is being neglected and go do it right? It’s that wonderful scene in have you seen the show, the movie, the intern, yeah, with right. When he goes, a guy, the old guy, goes and, and he cleans the table up, right that the boss has been complaining, boom, and that’s it, right, cleans the table. Perfect example. I had student working starting at, um, she was meant to start on a Monday, and it was one of the last blizzards that came in and it was a snow blizzard. I said, you call up and you find out whether you can go in on the Saturday, because other people aren’t. They’re going to take the excuse not to go in. If you go in, you’re going to get an advantage, and you’re going to be seen. She had an amazing internship. By the time all the other interns had started, she had been there, the news director knew who she was, everybody knew who she was, and she got to do things nobody else did because she had taken advantage of the opportunity that was there, yes, and so that said, it’s looking for the opportunities, and as they say, and then when you do get something, yes, right? It’s you don’t say no until you have you’ve earned the right to say no. You say yes. And so, if you say yes to everything, the opportunities will come to you.

Kelly

But you make an important point about how to make yourself visible, because that intern made herself visible, right? And so you need to take the hard projects to get noticed. You need to be memorable in some positive way. Become indispensable. And how do you become indispensable? Do you have some special skill that you’re really great at? So, for me, the kids that are great at Microsoft Excel, that are total gurus with spreadsheets, oh, my God, I adore them, because I need that. That’s an important skill, and most of them have that today. But then can they take that data and visualize it in charts or graphs? That’s like, okay, so become the spreadsheet guru. Are you good at online research? Become the online research guru, you know, and amplify that. Take what your skill is, make sure that you’re the go to person for XYZ, and so that’s how you really showcase your own talent and become visible well.

Amos

And that’s what you just said, exactly what illustrate exactly what I was talking about, about being strategic, right? So, if they’re in your presence. If they work with you for the first two weeks, they know that they’re going to find out fairly quickly. That is what you prize, yes. And then, and then you dive into that, right? We had had an intern this last fall. Had no idea what he wanted to do. No idea. He had been sort of into sports coaching, but didn’t know what it was. Got on with this group called district sports, which is a recreational Soccer League, but it’s actually a big business. He went in there, and one of the first things they asked him to do was to simply crunch the numbers so they could work out what the value of each player was. He didn’t have no idea how to do this. No idea he’s doing valuations on this stuff, but, you know, they showed him a little bit. He Googled it, he worked it out, and he did this. They were blown away. Then he was like, they were like, well, he’s from an area outside DC called Montgomery County, right just outside, they were thinking, they were thinking of expanding it. So, he started, he just went out and found out all the fields that exist and then started calling up. And then he called up a bunch of schools which had fields, and they said no, or we woke with a anyone. And so, they just kept and after that, they are just. Giving him more and more opportunity, because he had said Yes, done it, delivered and then kept finding out on stepping into the breach, as you said, because that’s what they did, but what they needed of him, what isn’t what you would need of somebody, or what somebody at a television network would need, or somebody who was doing an event planning internship, right? It’s, it’s about this is where the professionalism becomes, and that’s if they can learn that early. You know that saves them the rest of life. When, when you started in San Francisco, when you build up the bureau in San Francisco, didn’t you do that. You found the opportunities, you develop the opportunities, and you just, you just do what Kelly Poe does better than anybody else in the world, right? And you just did what you do. And that’s what’s happened with the students who’ve come through, who’ve gone on to do great things, is they have, they look for those opportunities, and then they run at them as hard as they can, maximizing that utility belt, right?

Kelly

You know, I’ve definitely had interns where they’ve come in and fallen into projects, just like you said, and then found their passion, that they were interested in something through the process of doing that. And so, I think the one thing that’s important is adaptability. Change is constant. So, you might come into an internship and have a list of all your To Do, lists of things that are you’re going to need to do, but a new client comes along, a new project comes along, a project gets pulled away. And so, you know, things that you might have, projects you might be working on, could be killed in an instant, and because priorities shift, right?

Amos

And so, you know, you have to be able to accept that, and because that’s real life, that’s real work, and accept that feedback and those unexpected challenges. And then one of the soft slash hard skills, this is where they come together, is one of the things that we focus on. And so, I say to the students, so who is your competition? And they start some other student, or somebody said, no, your competition is the sixth grader who’s coming up, who’s learning all these new technologies, right? So, you need to be able to adapt. And so, a lot of what we do in our program is students like to have a syllabus, so they know exactly what coming you prepare. What we do is we, we throw technology at them, throw cameras, throw their equipment at them, give a basic training, and then tell them to deliver right? So, the idea is, they get adaptable. They get used to the idea of, oh my god. I have no idea how to do this, but I have to deliver that. And then I say, about halfway through the semester, okay, how many of you have things at work when things were thrown at you that you had absolutely no idea on how to do, right? And this is the soft, hard skills. And all of them put up their hands, right? And I said, how did it go? And they’re like, well, you did it to us first, right? So, so it’s that adaptability combined. So that’s the adaptability, which is the soft skill, with the hard skill of the ability to embrace a technology or something they don’t know how to use and work out, embrace it and solve the problem. Yeah, and that’s and that’s where the two comes to come together. And these guys, this generation, they’re really capable of doing that. Sure, they’ve just they haven’t. It’s not in curriculum. It’s not what schools do. It’s not what they’ve seen anywhere else along I mean, so imagine, remember when Facebook first began, or we started doing social media, and they came up, and it’s like, what is this strange thing? TikTok comes up, and there’ll be something off these, these guys, they adapt to the technology. Yeah, so much more quickly and that’s where the hard and soft skills, but they have to be willing to keep moving. They have to be willing to know that what they’re doing today isn’t right. As you say, the project can go away tomorrow, right? And how do you deal with that thing that you spent all your time and suddenly, no, we’re done with that, right? And that’s that is something that, again, I always sound really negative to begin with, because this because they’re unprepared. They’re unprepared for people like even the best ones are unprepared. I mean, I’ve had the great pleasure, honor, and you’ve been generous in taking interns over the time. All of them learn so much, but part of it is I know what they’re getting from you. And so, then I’m able to work on the front end to accelerate their performance with you, to embrace those challenges and embrace whatever it is, so the mattress project or whatever that they come into, to understand why it’s important and why it’s important for them.

Kelly

So, we’ve covered most of the soft skills communication, which is really number one, right? A little bit about teamwork and collaboration. You need to work well in a team. You need to be able to have those interpersonal skills like empathy and active listening, contact, conflict resolution, avoiding politics, which is another one that can be a big challenge for everybody, not just interns, but then the final one for me is positive energy. And you and I talked about this a little bit in terms of some interns got it, and some that don’t and from my perspective, as a person who works in an agency, we love it when interns come, because they bring in this fresh energy and this excitement, and they look at things in a completely different way. And so, it becomes positive energy, right? And so that’s kind of what we’re expecting. Are you bringing that? You’re Not You shouldn’t be jaded. Yet you’re an intern, right? You know, you’ve been there for 30 years in the way we have. And so, you know part of your job is, is to bring that positive energy, to lighten, to brighten the office and a part of that is, is confidence, showing that you are confident, but not overconfident, right? And there’s a line in there, very gray line, because very much don’t have to be able to show that you’ve got the ability to learn. You should be confident in your current abilities about what you know, whatever they may be, but willing to learn and not be overconfident.

Amos

Absolutely. And part of it, to me is also, I mean, for me, this is where my job begins, right? And so, it’s the internship placement, right, that conversation, because part of the problem, we’re talking about professionalism here. Part of the problem is that so many of these students only know, or they only think the opportunities that are there for them are the two or three they’ve heard about in school, or somehow, somewhere along so part of it, and most of the time, and we spend a lot of time in this project, helping what I call as people are speeding along a runway, a freeway, but they they’re people who are studying journalism and should never be a journalist, or people have gotten into PR and shouldn’t be there. So, part of what we do is helping them find which freeway they should be on and helping them get on the off ramp on the other one. So, part of what I hope for when I send somebody to you is that I’ve already worked with them so that they’re the right kind of person for you. And part of and it’s not just having an internship, right? It’s not just doing that, because then what they’re going to do is they’re going to pursue that, and they’re going to go into a career that, frankly, they’re going to hate, and they’re going to hate going to work. They have to actually be somewhat interested. And so, if we can find the internships that fit where they are, they’re going to have that interest, because they’re finally stuck. Oh, wow, I’m actually interested in this, right? And then, and part of what we do is, if it’s not working, we will, we will shift them right, if it’s not working as an internship. But so, the energy is vital, but part of that is helping the students. This is about finding themselves, helping them work out what they really want to do, which generally forfeits the time, is not what they think they want to do, so that by the time they get to you, or they get to the newspaper, or they get to whatever they’re going to, they have a sense of, oh, this is why I’m doing that. Just to sum up with journalists, for example, what I say to a lot of people, because I’m pretty good at working out who’s is on what I call journalism is not a career path, it’s a psychosis, right? And it’s for and, and, and it’s and I’m pretty good at identifying them, but for most of the kids, they love journalism, but they don’t know why, and that’s part of what the internship is working out. Why they love this. Why are they going to commit?

Kelly

You know that me and my husband and my son are, we’re all journalism majors, so I guess we all have a psychosis.

Amos

Well, but you went in a different direction, right? Well, he sort of did, but sort of didn’t, right, he’s closest to it, right, right?

Kelly

Anyway, it’s funny. So, let’s close this out about any final advice for interns aspiring to demonstrate professionalism. And I’m going to do mine first so you can kind of have the final word. And the first one is, you know, seeking out mentors. Everyone likes to be asked for advice, really. So don’t be afraid to confidently, but not over confidently ask for advice. People want to give out advice. So, there are you can find your mentor with an internship, and you really should. And then, other than being visible, which we talked a lot about, you know, demonstrate your drive and your passion. Drive is about following through and going the extra mile and striving for excellence. Passion is really about enthusiasm and excitement for what you do, and you have it, or you don’t. And so, we want to hire people that have both.

Amos

So, is a wonderful line that I always say is that if you want a job, ask for advice, and if you want advice, ask for a job, right? And so, to me, the biggest thing that I say about the professional, about the professionalism and the hard and the soft skills, is it’s about expectations, and it’s their expectations of how the world is or should respond to them, and we need to flip that right. It’s not about what they want. It’s, as I say to them, about interviews. Everybody goes into an interview, and they say, an interview is I say, who’s about and they say it’s about me. And the answer is, No, it’s not about you. When you go to an internship or you go to an interview, it’s not about you, it’s about them, right? Are you somebody that they want to work with? Are you somebody they want to bring onto their Yeah, and that everything you do your interests is having them feel very lucky that you’re the person who landed on their doorstep. And to do that, you have to do all the other things you mentioned. But it all starts with the expectation you don’t matter. You’ve got to make them feel that you’re the best thing that happened to them.

Kelly

Got it well. Thank you so much for your time today, and I’m really excited to see what people say.

Amos

Me too. And I look forward to seeing the feedback, thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Take care. Bye.

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